This started off as a simple autopsy of a faulty lamp and turned into something so much more. It's a very clever design that makes the circuit very universal. If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX_uFs5vKc0

This large Christmas lighting frame is the very essence of streamlined mass production. A robust steel frame with a single section of LED rope light with perfect colour transitions seemingly moulded directly into the outer plastic sleeve at just the right spacing to fit a welded frame. It gives the impression of a swirl of 12 individual stars in alternating colours. This cost £40 which is exceptional for something approaching the appearance of the classic small aluminium municipal frames in the £500 price region. It won't have the longevity of an aluminium frame and certainly isn't suited to mounting on a lamp post, but for an interior retail or entertainment environment it would be perfect. The frame accommodates about 7m of rope light and would be fairly easy to retube, albeit in a single colour. I still can't get my head around how they have added the colour so precisely to the rope. Is the outer layer completely coloured or has it been made as a finished clear white rope and then a thin extra layer of colour added on the surface? I may have to dig into it to see. The references to the George Square Xmas lights are to the original colourful animated lights which were scrapped a few years ago when the contract was taken over by another company. They were the first Christmas lights in the world to use rope-light-on-frame construction. Being the prototypes for the modern Christmas lighting industry they were somewhat "industrial" in their construction. Very heavy 3D steel frames that had to be craned into position. If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yCgRsYXD6I

I saw this in a local shop and bought it to see if it really did rotate, and it does. The construction is actually surprisingly good, with a very weird bit of minimalist circuitry to switch the motor. If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WOcviOnwbI

Having seen Julian Ilett dismember a larger version of the lithium battery pack used with the Ryobi one-plus power tool range, I decided to have a look inside one of my own. Especially when I'd just bought a cordless circular saw and wanted to see how the battery pack could handle the power requirements of a fairly high current tool. It's worth noting that the cordless circular saw is designed for simple cuts of sheet wood and not for full-on continuous industrial use. Inside is a surprisingly simple array of just five 18650 style cells with beefy interconnects and a control PCB for handling the charge/discharge requirements of lithium cells. If you could source decent known-quality cells capable of super high current then there's no obvious reason you couldn't fit an old or faulty battery pack with a set of new cells. Julian's teardown of a higher capacity pack differs from this one in that it uses five clusters of two paralleled cells to give a higher capacity, but just treats each pair of cells as a single cell. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5MSSVN9eWw