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Step 4(Optional) Make Battery Spring Contacts
If you'd prefer to spend a little extra time now in exchange for a much easier life later on, I'd suggest you build the battery connectors I did, or something along these lines. If you can scavenge spring connectors from another device, so much the better. I couldn't find any, so I had to improvise. By dint of heroic effort, by which of course I mean I looked around the room for something suitable, I found the perfect solution. Well, not perfect, because the perfect solution wouldn't require half an hour with a dremel to get working.
I got a couple of cheap picture hangers and cut them to size. By cheap I mean really thin, flimsy metal. The one which inspired the idea was too thick; there was no "spring" to it. I got some at Walmart that are satisfactorily shoddy. Note that mine are brass plated, and solder loves brass. This is an important point. If yours are a silver color, they're probably galvanized. Good luck soldering those.
I used a cutoff wheel with the Dremel to cut the tabs shown in the first picture. I soldered them in place, with much cursing of unstable parts that like to move before the solder's solidified completely. I cleaned the board scrupulously with rubbing alcohol (note that I populated my board before doing this; I didn't have any picture hangers on hand and couldn't wait to start soldering). I placed the battery on the board for a fit check. It was then that I discovered the value of getting off of my fat butt and walking across the room to get the battery rather than guesstimating. As you can see in the second picture, the contacts are a bit short. They make only the most incidental contact with the battery's terminals, and my bet would be that the slightest movement of the unit would break contact, albeit only momentarily. Not good enough.
In the third picture, we see a more satisfactory set of contacts. Although they don't look it, they touch both the top and bottom of the terminals, and the better angle of the contact area gives a much more secure hold on the battery when it's wedged into the case. The angle I added at the back really seemed to help.
I got a couple of cheap picture hangers and cut them to size. By cheap I mean really thin, flimsy metal. The one which inspired the idea was too thick; there was no "spring" to it. I got some at Walmart that are satisfactorily shoddy. Note that mine are brass plated, and solder loves brass. This is an important point. If yours are a silver color, they're probably galvanized. Good luck soldering those.
I used a cutoff wheel with the Dremel to cut the tabs shown in the first picture. I soldered them in place, with much cursing of unstable parts that like to move before the solder's solidified completely. I cleaned the board scrupulously with rubbing alcohol (note that I populated my board before doing this; I didn't have any picture hangers on hand and couldn't wait to start soldering). I placed the battery on the board for a fit check. It was then that I discovered the value of getting off of my fat butt and walking across the room to get the battery rather than guesstimating. As you can see in the second picture, the contacts are a bit short. They make only the most incidental contact with the battery's terminals, and my bet would be that the slightest movement of the unit would break contact, albeit only momentarily. Not good enough.
In the third picture, we see a more satisfactory set of contacts. Although they don't look it, they touch both the top and bottom of the terminals, and the better angle of the contact area gives a much more secure hold on the battery when it's wedged into the case. The angle I added at the back really seemed to help.
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