Purelite battery fix (And plug installation)
Do you use a Purelite (or Trend) forced air respirator? Are you tired of fiddling with the battery recharging system. (Unclip the sides, hinge open the top, get the *#% start stop button out of the way, unclip the batteries, plug one into the charger - only one plug so you cannot charge both batteries even if you did spend the extra bucks and buy a second battery - then wait for the battery to charge, do the other one, open the top and reinsert the batteries. Whew, finally, you are ready to go again.
Seems like a long process and hardly likely to spur you on to wear the respirator all the time as you do not want to have to recharge the batteries more than necessary.
Purelite/Trend Powered Respirator Upgrade I got tired of having to remove the batteries from my respirator every time I had to recharge them. So I decided to install a socket/plug right on the respirator. These sockets are available from "The Source"/Radioshack for about $4 and the plugs are two for $4.
Figure 1 Wire plugged in to the respirator from the charger.
To get to the wires it is necessary to remove the cover filter and the snap on filter under that. Connect the wires from the socket to the wires coming from the left battery making sure that the center pin is the positive side. I initially used quick connect terminals available from auto supply stores but found that these were unreliable with the wire gauge used so replaced these with directly soldered connections.
Figure 2 The green wires have been added. White insulating tape.
When the batteries finally wore out I decided to replace these with some surplus cellphone batteries available from Princess Auto (Part # 8112518) These batteries are small enough to place two in each battery compartment.
Figure 3 Battery as it comes in the foreground. Two pack taped together with plug soldered to the leads.
The plugs that fit the Purelite Respirator are called "Coaxial Power Plugs 0.2 po 5mm D.EXT : 0.1 po 2.5 mm D.INT" (Part # 2741568) This way one can charge the two batteries (four in my case) all at once and without having to struggle with the cover and those silly little tabs that hold it all together. I clean the filter regularly with the shop vac and that takes care of the respirator. By John D Williams. oubaasjohn@gmail.com http//:www3.sympatico.ca/3jdw8
Figure 4. What it looks like close up with the battery pack installed. Notice the plug just sits beside the battery.