If I use Gorilla super glue to attach a spring; will it conduct enough juice to light an led?
super glue is not conductive. You can buy conductive adhesive which is used when normal soldering is not practical. It is not as good as solder for many reasons. There are no substitutes to soldering. BTW there is no tensile strength with superglue and any time you will apply force to the spring it will crack.
That was easy; Thanks.
no glue will be remotely as conductive as a solder joint, that alone will make gluing fail for any flashlight applications
in addition to being brittle as lampliter said, that kills it for using with springs
wle
Thanks; while “experimenting” with my Cometa I broke the spring off of the board side.
I haven’t done any soldering for a number of years and was looking for an easy way out.
My soldering iron at present is one of those that runs on butane which is not good for precision work.
Depending on what the driver (board) looks like you might be able to get away with no spring, possibly with button top cells or a few magnets.
I’d also say that of all the things that need to be soldered, springs aren’t terribly difficult, they’re at least less fragile than other parts.
I once glued a contact pad on the bottom of a tailcap.
The contact pad was a small copper disk cut from sheet copper. The bottom of the tailcap was flat and I needed the pad to serve as a post for better contact. I glued it in places with a little arctic alumina epoxy.
The pad was fairly wide and I was careful to only glue one side. That way, pressure from the battery pressing into the top acted as a lever to press the unglued side firmly against the tailcap. It works great and has held up very well.
It would not be my first choice to use the same technique with a spring and super glue. Super glue is not flexible and springs need to flex and there is a lot of force against it. Solder is a much better solution for a spring.
However, if solder is not an option in your application, it might be worth a try. Glue one side of the spring, leaving at least 2/3 to 3/4 of the base of the spring unglued for electrical contact. If using super glue, make sure to use a gel type super glue so it won’t accidentally run and cover the bare portion of the spring.
It still won’t hold up nearly as well as solder, but if solder is not an option it might work.
I just went through this with my Convoy S3. My solution was to drop a small solder blob into the center of the spring then hold the spring in place while inserting the iron into the spring.
There is such a thing as conductive paint, made to repair broken traces and even make new ones for prototyping. Perhaps use a spot of that to “glue” down a copper or brass button, then put real glue around the outside of the button to make a more permanent bond to the board.