Introduction: A Portable and Powerful Vacuum Cleaner

About: Technology

Most vacuum cleaners which are depicted in Instructables site or in YouTube have stationary batteries and I have not come across one with rechargeable compact free batteries, don't get shocked yes free batteries, and here I am going to explain to you how it works...

Step 1: Materials and Components Needed

The materials and components are as follows:

1- Two empty plastic bottles of milk.

2- Two plastic containers (red colors in the attached photo), in my case I used an empty cream container the dimension of those were as length = 8 cm and diameter = 10 cm

3- Six lap top batteries which are taken out from a faulty lap top battery pack each are nearly 3.8 Volts

4- One rocker switch

5- One charging jack

6- A piece of PVC pipe something like 12 cm length

7- Enough wires with 1.5 mm^2 cross section enough for high Ampere drawn by motor

8- A vacuum cleaner motor and fan (this could be obtained from those repair shops of portable vacuum cleaners from those scrap cleaners in my case I bought one for $6 )

9- Glue

10- A piece of tube (suction head of vacuum cleaner) I use a part of a Vitamin C container.

11- A piece of 12 by 12 cm perforated screen used for preventing mosquitoes coming from out side.

12- A wire strap

Step 2: Tools Needed

1 - A small drill

2- A cutter

3- A soldering iron

4- A wire stripper

5- A small hand saw

6- A multimeter

Step 3: How to Do It

1- Break the battery pack of lap top and extract the batteries be careful not to let the batteries poles get shortened and try not to injure your hands, these batteries are lithium ion and you can find more information of them in this instructable: https://www.instructables.com/id/Salvaging-Recharg... by: electronics for everyone in electronics

then measure the Voltages if the Voltage of batteries are 3.7 or 3.8 or a little more keep it for this project if less keep it for other projects and if they are useless discard those properly.

Make two groups of these batteries and in each group connect three batteries in series by proper size wires to increase the total Voltage of each group to nearly 12 Volts(3* 3.84 = 11.52 V in my case), then connect these groups in parallel i.e. same polarities attach together. Measure the total Voltage of this set it should be 11.5 or something similar figure. Be careful to make red marks or plus sign for positive and black mark or minus sign fotr negative polarities.

2- Make holes in the back of two containers so that a tube as described at following could be fixed inside this hole and Glue both containers back to back, the front container is for motor-fan and the back is for batteries. Insert a small PVC tube in the middle of both containers, and after gluing it to both containers, and it has joined strongly the both containers, insert the motor inside the center tube so that motor completely get fixed inside the tube and do not move when it works. Also drill some holes in the periphery of the front container and many holes in the door of the back container to make batteries to be cooled by free convection air.

3- Glue six pieces of electrical duct as battery holders in the internal periphery of the back container and let them be dried a then insert the batteries with attached wires and join the negative wire of battery set to the motor negative terminal.

4- Make a rectangular hole in the PVC pipe enough for the rocker switch and after soldering a wire to both terminals of rocker switch insert it in to the rectangular hole which was made on the pipe.

5- Find a circular thick plastic and make a hole in that and insert the rechargeable jack inside of that and glue them both strongly.

6- solder the two ends of rechargeable jack to both ends of battery set in place and solder one end of the rocker switch to the positive pole of battery set and the other end of that wire to the positive terminal of the motor.

7- Glue the PVC pipe to the back container after making a hole with enough dimension for PVC pipe to be inserted in that, and then glue them as good as possible.

8- Take one of the milk bottles and cut end of that and cut the other bottle near to the top and try to attach them with their axes perpendicular and try to trim the lower pipe for a good joint and then glue both properly together.

9- Cut a piece of Vitamin C tube and cut one side of that obliquely and attach its other side to the milk bottle.

10- Attach the perforated screen to the front of the front container and insert that in to the cut end of the milk bottle and use wire strap to hold them together. That's it ...now start to test the vacuum cleaner.

Step 4: Testing and Using the Vacuum Cleaner

Now try to test it with small debris and pieces of paper, Do not let it works more than ten seconds because it can drain the batteries quickly, try to charge the batteries to 12 V or a little more say 12.5 V, then use it as you like it.

Do not recharge batteries with higher voltages than what is said above.