2026-05-26 Waste Vape Products and Electronic Flash—a Possible Project

Warning! Lithium batteries can ignite. Don't try using them unless you are aware of the dangers!

I am a little discouraged by those who use vape products. When they finish their vape unit, some users pitch them. I started picking them up while on my daily walks. They all contain a battery that is considered hazardous waste. They also contain bits of electronics and plastics. Once you learn their assembly you can tear them apart. It has occurred to me I have many of the bits to make battery packs for old electronic flash.
All the batteries—in these items—have a little over 3 VDC. It should just be a matter of wiring one into a two AA battery flash and you’re done.
Then I noticed many of the vape products have charging ports. Now it should be possible to use the battery and then recharge it!

This is some of the inside bits of a pocket vape device. The long blue unit is the battery.

The black display panel shows the switchable output—10W and 20W—with the battery power expressed in percentage below and the amount of vape liquid showing in the drop to the right. The metal charging connection is at the upper left. The white button to change the output from 10 to 20 watts is at the upper right.

You can pull all the components out of the plastic vape structure for access to the various wires. That metal tube at the upper left—wrapped in soft tape—holds the heater that converts the vape liquid to smoke. It can get warm and burn you if you short out the wrong wires. That metal bit—with three leads it looks a lot like a metal cased transistor—above and to the right of the digital display is a vacuum sensor switch. When the person sucks on the vape mouthpiece it switches on the heating element in the metal tube.

The three wires—one white and two blue—leading off to the left are the power going to the heater. These could be tapped to go to the electronic flashes battery connections. Some experimentation would have to be done to see if this would be the route to go, or would just connecting the battery connections straight to the flash’s connections be preferable? Too much power can lead to burning out the flash. Too little vape battery power and the flash would never reach full power.

Here is a rough—very rough—drawing of the connections.

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