My Latest Invention - The Battery +- Inversion

UPDATE: All that work and the flashlight still doesn't have enough light output to be practical for any use so I threw the whole thing in the garbage later in the summer of 2021. 

Tim.

You probably have an old lantern flashlight or two lying around from days gone by.

I found three languishing in the front hall closet. They all have old filament type bulbs so I thought I'd be smart and replace them with LED bulbs. I figured the large lantern batteries would last a long, long time with these energy efficient upgrades. I replaced the old bulb, popped in the new 6v lantern battery and voila...           Ooops - NOTHING!

It turns out that as you can see, the center spring is negative and the other spring is positive. With filament bulbs it doesn't matter which way the current flows but with LEDs the battery must be center positive to work. What to do? It looked impossible to alter the flashlight so I looked again at the battery.

Hmmm... I could bend the negative spring so as to move it from the middle to the edge.

That's a good start so tape that in place.

Now I bent the other positive spring to reposition it in the middle.

Now tape the positive in place.

There you have it! A very simple fix to a perplexing problem. Let's call it my "+-  inversion"

The new LED bulb shines bright in my old lantern, a place it was never designed to be.

 Of course you wouldn't have to do this inversion with a regular positive center flashlight so its even easier to convert your old flashlights lying around the house. 

CLICK HERE to see the bulbs on Amazon. The batteries should go many years with the low energy LEDs.

UPDATE March 2022: This flashlight is still a useless piece of crap. The LED bulb is weak. I threw it in the garbage.

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