Flashlight explodes in Colorado man's mouth

Better Headline: Idiot from Colorado Eats Flashlight--Trying for Darwin Award

I will sometimes stick a flashlight in my mouth... when using two hands to search for or fix something. I have a head lamp I like better, but it's not always "at hand"

George H.

I have not purchased a flashlight that was not fully watertight in over a decade.

Even the cheap plastic ones have an O-ring in them.

over

... hell, even my arse has an O-ring

I usually stick my Maglite in my mouth when digging for something in the dark. No problems for maybe 40 years because I use alkaline batteries. I guess I should stop putting it in my mouth, although it's probably easier to just drill a small hole in the case to vent the flashlight. If I want waterproof, some tape over the vent hole. That should be easy as I'm sure some watchdog agency will now mandate that flashlights be labeled "Do not eat".

Good point, George. Do I detect a little tongue-in-cheek?

On a sunny day (Tue, 20 Jan 2015 08:01:02 -0800 (PST)) it happened snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in :

I have a high power CREE LED flashlight from ebay. When I got it I left it of to see how long the (rechargable) battery lasted. Forgot about it, when I came back the light was very dim, and the beam distorted. It had melted, the pastic, the LED itself, and the wiring.

Opened it and found that the wires connecting the chip had burned of all isolation. these batteries WIL explode with shorted wires. Was just lucky, changed the design.

So.. not for continuous use. That was NOT a cheapo flashlight either.

Well, its construction and feed circuitry was obviously cheapo, because the feed lines should never have experienced the requisite current for "melting".

A discharge event can be just as dengerous as a charge event.

Place a 1/4" x 1" x 10" copper bar across a fully charged cadillac sized car battery and it will dump several hundred amps into that bar, and the battery will explode within a matter of moments. The bar may melt, fuse open, and spray some too before it is over.

There is a reason modern batteries have a slow charge rate, and a warning about heavy load discharge events being capable of causing catastrophic failure modes such as fire and explosion.

Was the 18650 battery that was supplied a "protected" or "unprotected" battery? Supposedly, the protected variety offer short circuit protection, while the unprotected variety will smoke or burn. I've never bothered to test the effectiveness of the protection.

$13 is a cheap flashlight and 2200 lumens is probably a gross exaggeration.

On a sunny day (Tue, 20 Jan 2015 12:16:11 -0800) it happened Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

I dunno, one of the 2 batteries that came with it has high self discharge, had that from the beginning, one was full, the other empty when it arrived. He is perhaps selling rejects... he now no longer ships to the Netherlands. We are safe.

Well it was pretty bright, especially when focussed. I considered getting a new Cree LED board, that would be an other 5 $, not worth it. I just polished the melted plastic a bit, it still works, changed the wiring for real wires, and improved the thermal conductivity of the LED board with the metal case. In retrospect I think it was mounted wrong.

He was using RCR123A LIFePO4-rechargeable batteries-with the supplied smart charger from the battery vendor Tenergy. The flashlight was a Solarforce L2T from . The guy posted on the Candlepower forum after it happened.

These batteries are not widely used in flashlights but if anyone happens to be using them, you might want to think about using something else.

I probably would not blame the flashlight, but the batteries. I probably have held a flashlight in my mouth on occasion, but I won't anymore. Nite Ize used to make a mouth holder for AA flashlights but it's been discontinued, see .

My first thought was he had the LI-Ion's with the charging board built on them. But LIFePO's would do the same as well.

I'll stick with NiMH.

Cheers

Hmmm- are those batteries labeled "UltraFire"- not a good choice.

Well, it's easy enough to determine if it's protected. Just short the terminals. If the battery makes a small spark and then plays dead, it's protected. If it explodes in your face, it's not protected.

Unfortunately, not all protected 18650 batteries are really protected. What if the protection circuit fails? Article #33 is the seller response:

I suspect your battery with the high self discharge was simply produced incorrectly and has a short across the separator. Ask for a replacement or refund.

Got an integrating sphere? That's about the only way to get an accurate number for lumens. Brightness (luminous intensity) is measured in candelas. If you focus the light to a very small spot, it will be VERY bright. Make it small enough and you can burn holes in things. However, the total amount of light delivered, regardless of direction, is in lumens. That requires an integrating sphere to capture all the light. Most flashlight buyers don't have an integrating sphere and therefore cannot verify the advertised values, thus inviting vendors to exaggerate their numbers.

That's quite possible. If there's more than one way to assemble something, it's only a matter of time before someone actually delivers it assembled in those ways.

We've got a couple of these,

sorry or this

George H.

Chuckle, It's been a long time since I enjoyed one of your posts. (you should just ignore, rather than argue..) Thanks George H.

It's a flashlight that exploded not a fleshlight!

Got a link to the Candlepower thread? It looks like the scorched batteries in the USA Today footage are the CR123A primary cells sold on the Solarfor ce page ("Batteries: CR123A (primary lithium battery), S16340-P, S18650-P, S18650P(V3) (rechargeable li-ion battery)".) If you click on the links for those battery types, only the CR123A primary has the visible ridge under t he positive terminal that you can see on the burned batteries in the video. There's no reason to think the unburned batteries we see for a moment in the video are the same ones.

This matters because LiFePOs are supposed to be much safer. If that isn't true, it'd be good to know.

As for primary CR123As used in series, they've had a bad reputation for som e time. One guy in another Candlepower thread reportedly managed to suffer HF gas poisoning when a discharged cell went China Syndrome on him. Doesn 't seem like a big deal at first, but 20 minutes later, bam, you realize th at you now have what might as well be emphysema.

-- john, KE5FX