There’s a ton of devices out there that have batteries in them but most people never think about it. That’s because they use rechargeables that are sealed inside and topped off with external chargers. [Todd Harrison] has a couple of them, including a cordless shaver and a Christmas light timer. He’s had these for years and the batteries have gone south. They’re not meant to be consumer-replaceable, but that did stop him from cracking them open and swapping out the solder-tab batteries himself.
The batteries themselves won’t be all that hard to source. The shaver just takes a NiMH AA cell. But since they’re not meant to be replaced [Todd] needed to do some soldering. Here you can see he’s using a solder gun to make the connection between the new battery and one of the solder tabs. He uses the gun instead of an iron because he needs to heat the joint quickly, and must avoid heating the rest of the cell which could rupture. As a safety precaution he’s wearing gloves and a full face-shield.
Check out the video after the break to see this, as well as the coin cell replacement in the lighting controller.
