re usable bits from an e cigarette

Step 1: What's in There

my wife purchased this e cigarette on line a lemon flavoured e shishee and when it ran out asked if I could refill it. The short answer is no, but it has yielded at least one potentially useful item. A Lithium-pololymer (LiPo) battery 250mAh capacity if you care to look it up on line its an LIR08500 an unexpected item as it was a disposable e cigarette. 110mm of 9mm alloy tube, a small circuit board mounting a suction switch and a red sm led, a small low wattage heater element & a brilliant cut plastic gemstone.

Step 2: Getting at It

On the first one I just grasped the top bezel with a pair of pliers and twisted the bezel broke and I pulled the contents out of the top with a pair of tweezers. On the second I placed the tip of a pen knife (a Stanley knife or craft knife would probably work as well) into the mouth piece hole and pushed down hard on a firm surface then rotated the tube 180° and did it again I was then able to prise the mouth pice out with the tip of the knife (it should be noted I'm not at home to mr health and safety that knife is sharp and had it slipped it would have been messy) you might want to use something blunter to leaver it out.

Step 3: Shake and Pull

Tap the open end an old news paper on the table to shake the contents down then prise and pull them out the design of this second e shishee is slightly different it has a plastic tank for the vapour liquid which might actually make it refillable especially as the whole of the electronics came out intact

Step 4: Replace the Cables

The first battery I salvaged still gave a reading of 3.5V as such once a new conector is attached it should be possible to just recharge it with a comercial LiPo recharging unit, the second only gave a reading of 0.05V well below the 3V safe discharge point so internal damage has definitly happened. I have encountered an instructable on recovering a LiPo from such a discharge state this it should be noted is down right dangerouse they can quite literally explode. Having damaged the wiring removing the battery this had to be replaced. Before I discoverd technobots.com sold cable ends and crimp pins I was contemplating making a socket up from salvaged jumpers and cyno glue . I ended up making the centre pin of a 3 pin socket the ground/ negative and one of the outer the+ then soldered the other ends of the wires to the relevant tags of the battery.

Step 5: Charging

given the tendency for LiPo cells to explode if charged incorrectly I used a commercially available charger they are not very expensive. A 3 pin header was attached to a small pice of pin board and cables with banana plug ends fitted attached to the relevant pins a sensible addition would be a rectifier diode to prevent accidentally trying to charge with reversed polarity. The board is lashed to an eraser with a cable tie as a temporary mount to prevent shorting. A quick bit of online research acquired the necessary parameters for the charge cycle these were set on the charger the battery connected via the header board and left to charge