SPICE battery adapter

[PANAMATIK]

SPICE battery adapter is finally available

Yesterday I received the parts from dirtypcb, which is of course somewhere from china. I replaced the battery adapter of my HP-37E successfully and it works. Also charging with the original charger is doing well.

I decided to manufactur only half of the flex PCB strip. This simplifies the replacement, because you don't have to unsolder the old flex cable from the power supply board. You just cut it half the way and solder the three traces together.







But not all is perfect. I had difficulties to remove the old solder resist from the original part manually and needed an abrasive "Dremel" tool. Then I discovered that the copper traces both were located at the same side of the flex cable and soldering the two parts together was not going too easy. The minimal thickness of the flex board prohibited immediate solder contact even when both pads had lots of tin. I soldered three small wires to bridge the gaps. I would have liked it without this complication for you, but no way, at least it was done in two minutes.

The new board offers about 0.5 - 1 mm more space in the battery holder. The board thickness is reduced to 1.2 mm compared to 1.5 mm of the original, and the battery contacts are more flat. Still the modern AA batteries are tight, but I think it is better than before.

By the way, I tried the known method of using dental floss for opening the SPICE case and this worked really well.

Have a look to my website. I will offer the SPICE battery adapter in january 2020, after I have written the instructions for the replacement.

Because the tiny flex board even from china is expensive and there is some work to do to solder the battery contacts the price will be 29,- Euro + shipping.

Bernhard