How to Make a Flashlight With String | Rechargeable Emergency Light

Hello friends in this instructables, I will show you how to make this flashlight or emergency light that is made using string and 3D printed parts.

Flash Lights are important whenever you are going out in the dark it may be in your favourite Hike or fishing

Now you may ask why did I use string to build this project? Strings or threads are a sustainable material meaning it is environmental friendly most of the flashlights are made using plastic frame

The main issue with plastic is that is not environmental friendly

Using a flashlight made of plastic will lead to environmental pollution! and as per the survey a good flashlight will last 2 to 3 years and later it is discarded. Once you discard, have you ever thought where it will go?

Most of them will come back to us! Meaning it will join landfills and then casue severe damage to the soil thereby stopping the water supply to the ground below

So there is a solution to all these problems that is using biodegradable material, If you don't know what biodegradable material is the materials that will degrade when it comes in contact with the soil for a period of time.

In our project, I will be using thread, which is a naturally available material, and the 3D printed frames, 3D printed frame used as inner frame is made of PLA plastic, which is biodegradable

The flaslight comes with a 3000Mah battery that is rechargeable and with one charge you can use this flashlight for almost a day nonstop

How cool is that right? i used a jute type colored strings that came in different colors, The choice of colors is yours.

Note: Always encourgage yourself and others to use eco friendly materials, The small step today will lead to very big positive impact tomorrow!

With all this being said let me begin this project, I strongly recommend you to build this since this project comes handy in your day to day life

These are the list of materials to make this eco-friendly flashlight

Lithium-Ion battery from amazon

Insulated Copper Wire

TP4056 Battery Charging Module from here

1W Led

Wires

Soldering Iron and Lead

Push Button

3D Printer

PLA Filament

Jute String

Paper Glue

Hot Glue

Any Dark Place to Test your Light

These are amazon affiliate links and upon qualifying sales i may receive a small percent at no extra cost to you

The frame for this flashlight was designed using Tinkercad, To make this flashlight as strong as possible I made the frame in triangle shape to which laterr we will be placing all the components inside

From the outside to cover this frame I will be using the jute thread all the dimensions were taken from the standard measurements of the electronic components.

You can use my design files to customise this frame even more further as per your needs.

Simply doanload the below file and if needed you can export to tinkercad or any other design software to make any changes as per your requirement.

After you have the design, Export the STL to any slicing software in my case I will be using ultimate cura, You can print this on PLA filament with color of your choice

I will use the black color since anyways in the end we are covering it up with the string, The printing time for both the parts combines is less than 30 minutes.

There is no need of using any rafts or supports at the time of printing since there is no overhangs(there is overhang at the top part but since the part is small the printer will take care of it.

The circuit for this project is really simple all you need is a Tp4056 charging board

Charging board has all the points to connect the necessary electronics that we are using in this project

To solder the positive and negative of battery a little bit trick is involved, To solder this and to make the wires fully flexible instead of using the custom wires I will be using enamled or insulated copper wire.

So why these? These are really flexible and it will suit our needs and consume less space, The enabled copper wire is simply a copper wire with insulated some coatings

To use this copper wire you have to remove that coatings on top layer, In my case I made a scratch to the lithium ion battery and then solder this insulated copper wire and you can see this in the steps above.

The battery is normally soldered with spot solder and that gadget most of us do not have so i have soldered with normal soldering iron.

After the soldering process is complete test the battery and wire connection by glowing the LED, if your soldering is proper it will glow

Now we can move ahead to continue the circuitary further, always it is recomended to check the circuit stepwise to save time later onwards.

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Since I wanted to make this flashlight very compact I made a frame that will hold the electronics with some minor allowance.

So if you are using jumper cables or any other cables with additional thickness that means you might have some issues to fit the electronics inside these 3D printed frame.

Since I used insulated copper wire everything went well for me and in your case it will be the same.

To start casing the electronic insert the battery first and then the LED followed by the charging board.

You can use either hot glue or double side adhesive to hold the battery inside frame, Use superglue to attach the charging board to the 3D printed frame.

Follow the exact placements like i did, The charging board comes in the standard size, and you don't need to worry about the placement since in the 3d printed frame there is a dedicated space to hold this part.

After you connect all the parts to inside there will be 2 ends and those ends will be soldered to push buttons

Test is the LED is glowing by touching the 2 ends of the wire and it will work for sure and now we can cover the frame with string and let us see that in the next step.

Now since you have embedded all the electronics inside this 3D printed frame, we can now finally make a covering are also called as body to this 3D printed frame.

Start by adding a tiny drop of super glue to one side of the triangle and make a first layer of the string followed by the other layer.

The entire process will take some time but it is worth the wait, I recommend you to slowly perform this step and if necessary you can add sa econd and third layer as well.

In my case since the thickness of my string was good the single layer was more than enough. If the thickness of your thread is small.

Consider adding two or three layer because at the end the internal components should not be visible from the outside.

To finish the flaslight we are going to add the push button at the back and there is an additonal space at the back just in case if you want to add keychain.

The wires that are excess can be trimmed and now solder the copper wire to this button and now to cover the part with string follow this step

Here i recommend you now to use the superglue since it may damage the circuit or the push button, So use paper glue

Add a layer of paper glue to the base and start placing the string all over the glue, if one layer is not enough consider adding another layer and now allow to dry completely.

This will complete the process of builiding this string flashlight and now we can test the project and see how in next step

Using this flashlight is next to easy, Anyone can use this flashlight if they have previously used any type of flashlight before.

Anyways let me tell you how to use this string flashlight that you just made! At the back of the flashlight you have a push button when you just push on it the flashlight will turn on and when you stop pressing the light will turn to off.

To recharge the battery all you have to do is connect this torchlight to any USB power source via the charging cable.

Now you may wonder why did I put this push button instead of a normal one nad off switch, The answer is simple, To save the power and increase the backup time of the light using this push button will do the job so well!

Now we are almost at the end of this instructables, If you want to see the video build tutorial of this project you can simply have a look at this video.

Consider building this project in your spare time and if you do let me know in the i made it section! That will help me to know how many of us are really interested in using the sustainable materials.

This was all about this project, If you still have anything to ask you cna do in the comments section, Thanks and have a great day.