Battery exploding stories

[kibbster]

I know Dolly's story on here and I have no doubts that it's true and I know Dolly know's what she is doing so it is a very unfortunate accident, but I've seen at least three stories in as many days about exploding batteries.
All of them are down to user error or stupidity (one of them an outright lie), like I said Dolly's is no doubt genuine.

It's being reported as an E-cig danger so is it just another direction of attack from the Antz or just hysteria?
Funny how we go months with nothing happening then just after Royal Fail and China Mail ban shipping batteries they start turning into live handgrenades all over the place.


Obviously they are a reminder on battery safety but I can't help but feel there's something going on.

 

[kibbster]

Oh and Mad Stan (The Mechanic) Glans Glanz is on the case now as well.





He is a troll though.

[g3mma]

I hope you are correct kibbster as me being a paranoid safety freak I'm seriously thinking of stopping vaping fearing that something like this will happen to me hense my post about batteries! It's all a bit Final Destination to me tho and I guess if you did enough research on any topic you could find a horror story attached (Joe Bloggs was sleeping and chocked to death on a spider ) It just happens that vaping is all over the press right now and they want things like this to scare people like me and others I guess that's why these story's are surfacing. There are dangers in everything we do. I guess if you buy a decent charger, decent batteries and charge them and use them in a safe manner it cuts the chances as much as you can possibly control. I just hope I can believe that nothing will happen if I'm safe about it.

[Roscopecotrain]

Dont buy cheap batteries. Chargle only when you are awake and about.

Im guessing most if not all the exploding batteries are ego style ones. Super cheap ones as well.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 2

[gordy180]

Whethere you are awake or not if the battery is going to explode it will. The problem is with the cheap batteries and chargers. If people keep using them the problem wont go away

[Perpetua]

It hacks me right off all these scaremongering stories . . . I've been using ecigs and charging all manner of batteries for over 3 years without a single incident. That's not to say I'll never have an issue, but I buy decent batteries and chargers and do as I would with anything that has a battery, treat it with respect.

How many mobile phone chargers or similar have gone pop I wonder. Don't see them making headlines.

[dickyg]

I'm fairly sure that more people have died from a house fire sparked by a discarded cig in an ashtray etc than an exploding battery. I'll continue playing the odds and vape.

[VE Jason]

E-cig batteries and chargers take a hell of a lot of hammer and they are rarely looked after properly (you should see the state of some of the returns)

It's also a natural reaction to screw the batteries as tightly as possible into the chargers, which is one of the biggest problems.

So, whilst there is always going to be a problem with inferior products, a lot of the problems are easily solved by the user.

Never leave them unattended whilst on charge
Clean the battery centre pin and charger contact at least once a week with tissue or alcohol wipes
Never over tighten a battery to the charger - plug the charger in first, then gently screw the battery in until the light on the charger flashes and stop.
Always use the charger supplied with your kit - there are Ego chargers for sale at the moment that will only work with one brand of batteries and can cause problems with any other battery
Use a mains adapter with CE (genuine) markings on it, rather than a USB port on your PC - these chargers will be more expensive than the cheap 3 pin chargers you get with kits and there is a reason for that.

Just basic stuff - but, would solve a lot of the problems we are hearing about.

[womble]

newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/06/19/seen-at-11-exploding-cell-phones-pose-a-serious-danger/
The dangers are out there for all lithium batteries. Just most people have no idea.


Ecigs just happen to be one of the stories of the moment and the majority of our press has always been biased/not presenting the facts in the correct way.

I'm not sure whether it's jump on the knock an ecig bandwagon, or purely terrible reporting.

[Blownupdolly]

I remember a big scare last year about Beko fridge freezers catching fire. Has anyone stopped using fridge freezers? I doubt it! How many kettles have blown up last year? Quite a few I reckon. No one stops using them either!

There will always be rogue devices or equipment in small percentages, purely because of the amount made and used. Nothing is 100% guaranteed. Although Mr Dolly was in the room with the ECIG charging, he admits he was wrong to go to sleep with it charging.

Just for clarification, the charger and mains both had the CE Mark on them.

[greendollar]

It's a combination of cheap,inferior chargers & user error ......in nearly every story of an e-cig battery exploding you hear ' I left it charging overnight ' , rarely do people read the instruction manual that comes with the charger or batteries .
My digital camera developed a fault & nearly blew up when charging the other day but the press wouldn't have printed the story if it had so there is a element of scaremongering where e-cigs are involved .

[ChillerVapes]

Lets make a quick list of things containing Li-ion batteries and think how many stories we have heard of them exploding...

RC vehicles
Laptops
Mobile phones
Razors (well at least mine does)
Cordless powertools
Mp3 players
Tablet pc's
Sat Navs
Electric cars
Electric bikes
Mobility scooters
Children's toy ride on cars and bikes
Torches
Camping lamps
sex toys
House bots (robot vacuum cleaners / lawn mowers)
Alarm systems
Airplane black boxes
Back up power supply batteries at hospitals

You get the picture... some of these products have been using li-ion batteries since the early days and we have only ever heard of a handful which have gone wrong.

I admit, that I believe that most of the cases are down to user error and I also believe that prehaps ecigs should not use the 510 connection as a charging point because as already said, people love to tighten the battery fully down onto the charger and never bother with cleaning! The amount of batteries I have repaired for my wifes workmates because the centre pin has been crushed down too far is crazy. I had one which the rubber grommet had split in half causing a short it had been pushed down so tight. It's these kinds of scenarios which will lead to a venting battery. If all ecigs either had removable batteries or a separate charging port, I believe that better chargers could be used which could monitor the battery for any issues and stop charging if anything is wrong. Heck, all an ego needs is a tiny bit of extra circuitry inside with a heat sensor which would trip a circuit breaker on the charging circuit if the battery started to get too hot.
In my experience, li-ion batteries don't seem to go over 45°c when charging and they only start to vent when they reach well into double figures so a safety circut to me, is a no brainer.

[Blownupdolly]

Sept 25, 2013 8:41:01 GMT greendollar said:

It's a combination of cheap,inferior chargers & user error ......in nearly every story of an e-cig battery exploding you hear ' I left it charging overnight ' , rarely do people read the instruction manual that comes with the charger or batteries .
My digital camera developed a fault & nearly blew up when charging the other day but the press wouldn't have printed the story if it had so there is a element of scaremongering where e-cigs are involved .

Trouble is, what makes it inferior and how do you tell? As I said above, the charger we used had the CE safety standard mark on it.

[womble]

I think the CE marks are just put on by alot of China, whether they are legit or not.

I would go for a named charger, from a decent shop you know/hope is selling real stuff.

I suppose this is for "proper" batteries, not ego stuff. For that you've got to go for legit ego batteries and the charger recommended by the UK store.

I'm not saying non joytech ego style batteries are unsafe, but you don't know what you are getting and I think all this copying and cost cutting to get the cheapest by China is starting to have a knock on effect at last. I expected it ages ago with all the crap stuff around.

[Blownupdolly]

Sept 25, 2013 9:17:41 GMT womble said:

I think the CE marks are just put on by alot of China, whether they are legit or not.

I would go for a named charger, from a decent shop you know/hope is selling real stuff.

I suppose this is for "proper" batteries, not ego stuff. For that you've got to go for legit ego batteries and the charger recommended by the UK store.

I'm not saying non joytech ego style batteries are unsafe, but you don't know what you are getting and I think all this copying and cost cutting to get the cheapest by China is starting to have a knock on effect at last. I expected it ages ago with all the crap stuff around.

So in effect it is a waste of time looking for a CE mark? We have two chargers both have the mark. One was bought from Jason ages ago and one from FT but I couldn't tell you which was which as they look the same.