Local NW Floridian with severe injuries from exploding ecig battery
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Test the battery, both while on the charger and once it comes off. If it's over 4.2 volts it's not good for the battery. These things really don't do well to be overcharged.
Being that both the charger and battery are of 'less then top quality' there's an increased risk.
Sorry, can't find your earlier post, please give me the link. Anyway here's the part of my bio that's relevant. That way you can work out whether or not I am qualified to talk about the engineering issues in e-cigarettes.
At 16 as an army cadet they sent me to REME at Arborfield (the army engineering centre) to do a course in electronics and radio, as I already had the the job of maintaining the cadet unit's radio gear. From that point on I was hooked on engineering. This was in the 1960's. I already had my own small private workshop in school at that time, with my own key, along with a full set of tools for troubleshooting and fixing valve radio gear. That's kind of an achievement for a schoolkid.
My first job was light engineering, specifically gunmaking. The small family-owned factory I worked in produced some odd armaments in .22 calibre to 20mm cannons. So, boys being boys, I'd made my first zip gun fairly soon. We actually hand-made 20mm rounds for odd purposes there, which was fun at that age, as you can imagine, and we had a test facility out back of the works. The work involved bench fitting, capstans, lathes, milling, grinding, linishing, fettling, presses, heat treatment and all the other skills involved in making complex machinery from scratch. Everything possible in light engineering.
Engineer's joke, from the sixties:
Young apprentice, looking at drawing of part, to foreman:
"Dan - it says 'Normalise' here as the last process, how do we do that?"
"Stick 'em in a crate in the corner overnight, son."
I moved on to auto-setting and CNC machine management. After that, somehow I got into radio transmission and spent a few years in transmission line and aerial construction and rigging, then got back in to radio bench engineering / repairs. In that game you get everything from simple jobs like repairing blown diodes in transceivers that have been reverse-polarised, to burnt-out rigs needing a total rebuild. From agricultural Italian valve gear, to space-station quality Swiss monobanders with multiple circuit boards packed into a tiny mobile case.
There's nothing quite like rigging a QRP transmitter and antenna from scratch, and getting that QSO in southern Africa, on a couple of watts and a self-designed longwire corner reflector just to see if you can do it. Or running a kilowatt of power on an illegal band and people 1,000 miles away telling you to turn it down.
Waiting till your mate picks up that length of antenna wire you left draped across his bench, then putting enough juice through it so he jumps and screams with an RF burn. Or working on valve gear and getting that 200 volt DC hammer on your arm that hits harder than 415 volts AC at 30 amps. A 'sparks' soon gets immune to the jolts - if you've got a young, strong heart. So I was rigging and repairing big valve stuff, quality transistor stuff and cheap rubbish with RF PA chips, from 4 watts to 1kW, from an early age.
Then came general electrical work, on theatrical lighting controls and sound systems. Those were the days when if you could work with pyro (MI cable), rig systems up in the roof of large buildings a long way up, and knew something about safe working at heights - and the stuff you rigged worked and didn't fall on the heads of the punters a long way below - then nobody worried about your paperwork. Proven successful 'doers' were valued above people with paperwork. It's all changed now due 'Elf & Safety, and CYA.
Knowing something about comms came in handy when the next useful-looking slot came in view, and I got into telecomms, ending up installing large telephone systems in banks and hotels. Then I got the itch to go sailing, being a practical sailboat type who was keen on boat maintenance and wasn't fazed by being out in the middle of nowhere with no help in sight. With the right tools and spares you are your own maintenance crew and often better at it than the hired help, in the end.
A long-range cruising sailboat has to generate its own power; you can't rely on diesel, sometimes there's none to be found. So a self-sufficient sailboat generates its own power, using 12 volt systems: solar panels, wind turbines, and hydraulic generators. Of all of them the towed turbine is the most efficient in the trade winds. So I gradually became an expert on low-voltage power generation and the storage and management systems, as there was no one else in my area who knew anything about that. It's easy to generate power if you have all three options, as one of them will always be working - wind, wave or sun are almost always going to be there. Sometimes too much of one or more. Managing the power is the tricky part, so you need to be au fait with all kinds of battery systems, chargers, inverters, regulators, monitoring equipment, cabling, panels, and so on. The years I'd spent cruising in local waters, including sailing around Britain, had been the training period. As an engineer, everything you do has some sort of slant in that direction because people are born as engineers, not made.
Hey you: when you look at a chair, you see a chair - right?
An engineer doesn't. They see a load-bearing structure with a safety factor of four with vertical loads, decreasing to 0.5 with lateral loads, made from stiff cellulose-based organic materials that grew in the form of different trees, held together by adhesives, fixings and interference fits, used as a load-bearing design with a function modified by aesthetic considerations. It comprises materials of differing tensile strengths (different woods, arranged in differing alignments to carry the loads required), machined or hand-worked in certain ways, with resorcinols and steel or stainless fixings of most likely 304 grade though possibly 400 series if corners were cut, all designed and built to take certain loads in a given direction while maintaining minimum weight plus an average safety margin of around two. You may see a chair, but an engineer doesn't.
Anyway I'd got involved with boatbuilding, and joined in building a large steel yacht. That involved learning to weld different materials and being confident enough in the result that you are happy to go a thousand miles from anywhere in the worst weather. So when I wet off and spent three years sailing solo halfway round the world, and living in some out of the way places, I needed no help. Low voltage electrics, metalwork, welding, fabrication, diesel maintenance, radio, pumps, heaters, refrigeration, and all the other boat maintenance and management are needed in addition to the obviously-required navigation and general skippering stuff. Your diesel won't start? That's tough, the nearest mechanic is 800 miles away. Batteries not charging? Hard luck, the nearest boat electrician is 1,200 miles away. Boat taking water fast? Better fix it quick then, there are three miles of water below you and the nearest marine engineer is 1,000 miles upwind. Not the place to be unless you know what you are doing.
When I came back it was hard to leave the boatyard (boaters will know what I mean), so naturally I got into marine engineering. That was fun but not really a long-term solution for me because although it's nice to be able to fit a new stern gland, weld a keel up, or fix a power glitch on a boat - it's very hard indeed to build up a cash pot to go cruising again with. And that's what every long-term cruiser thinks about, a lot of the time, because it's the only thing worth doing in this world - ask any long-distance sailor.
Well, anyway, I'd been a PC enthusiast for a long time and had got into the nuts and bolts of it a long time back. I'd been writing a technical column for a magazine. While I was out sailing I'd starting writing, as you do, and done various techie jobs in writing. Building websites was fun and I'd got into the mechanics of why some worked and some didn't. After all it was just another system, another bit of electro-mechanical widgetry that could be fixed or rebuilt better next time.
So of course I got into SEO, and soon found that while I was interested in database-driven websites and how to fix their problems, hardly anyone else could handle that stuff (at that time). And there I was with another occupation - which kept me busy for a while, and which was, in general, a better prospect than lying under a boat in the freezing rain of a March in England. After a time I found another niche that had nobody taking care of: managing the entire web business, not just the website. Teaming up with some office-skilled pros, it was a whole new ball game.
As time passed I also became a vaper, and found myself running a vaping site. This had the happy requirement for a web manager who knew about light engineering*, low-voltage electrics, battery-powered systems, writing, and political ability. Ah, sorry, I left that bit out earlier - as a sports coach of 40 years experience I'd set up national sports associations and done a lot of politicking in that line - anyone involved in sports politics will know the skills needed there: negotiation, compromise, pacification, coalitions, deals, slow but steady progress, and above all being able to see the future and planning for it - this is what it's all about.
* Light engineering means factory trades such as machining and fabrication
So there is an engineer's journey. Thousands of hours in factories and workshops, thousands of hours on RF systems, thousands of hours on DC electrics, thousands of miles by sea with nobody to ask for help, thousands of hours on a computer, and thousands of jobs jobbed. Your life depending on building a 20mm specialist cannon the right way, or fixing the watermaker a thousand miles from anywhere, or rigging something up in a roof that doesn't want to fall on the crowd below, or being able to climb to the top of a mast solo in rough weather out in the deep ocean, or wiring something up that has no documentation anywhere and sure doesn't want to fail; and finding and fixing the lethal screw-ups other people left for you. And some interesting people met here and there on the way. Lately, I suppose what is also relevant is that a lot of stuff about e-cig technical aspects comes across my desk, so I see more than many will ever do about this area.
I never built bridges or planes though; and I'm glad, because there are too many other people's screw-ups to take account of in those. I guess one thing I learnt along the way is that things go wrong. Any real engineer knows that by heart. If you don't, you're not an engineer. You might be able to convince someone else you are an engineer, though...
The first thing you build your stuff for is that it will fail, someday, at the worst time. Maybe you need to be an engineer who goes a thousand miles out into the middle of the ocean in a small boat to appreciate that point.
I did miss out some of my life because there was a lot of it, but this was the relevant bit. I'm old, and did a lot of stuff, and a lot of it was engineering.
Don't ever think something can't go wrong, because you're fixing to kill yourself that way, boy.
Roly
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And what happens when you have a wheel bearing lock up and send you out of control? Or a giant piece of space debris crash directly onto your car while you are driving a "safe speed". About the same odds. People say well it's not the same odds as a cellphone battery exploding but another perspective on that is me personally, I keep one iPhone for 2 years and then upgrade. That's one battery per 2 years. I've had at least 5 different batteries for my ecigs in a little over a year and I know that I'm more conservative on equipment. There's got to be people here that have bought over 20 batt's in that same amount of time. The odds get a lot more similar when you think of it that way.
OH!!! I didn't even think of that! So, what's the prize?? What is it?? WHAT IS IT????
It's a homemade metal tube mod with 2 used batteries that stack to give you 6 volts.
If I may reply, I am not driving as much as I'm vaping. Nor am I talking on the phone so much, nor am I close so much to my laptop as much as I keep my Buzz Pro in hands. I keep it close to my face, mouth, etc. A personal vaporizer is something different than anything else! My opinion.
The safety should be higher on a personal vaporizer than any of these devices.
Discounting just shear numbers of devices out there, I imagine there is a range of safety to be expected from one model car to another. Might just be a government sponsored gimmick to sell cars, but some are safer than others.
I'm gong to venture a guess that there might be an e-cig and battery combination (minis and mods) that is safer than another.
What do you drive?
or, if your throttle sticks, how far can you throw it before it blows up
I'm gong to venture a guess that there might be an e-cig and battery combination (minis and mods) that is safer than another.
What do you drive?
or, if your throttle sticks, how far can you throw it before it blows up
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lol, I did say a footnote at the bottom of your post would suffice
I appreciate the detailed info however. I had printed your post and gave it to a friend that I personally introduced to vaping. He is not a computer type of guy. I told him the info was reliable but could not say anything about the person who wrote it other than to say I trusted him from my experience here on the forums. That is much more clear now thanks to your informative post. I was following your guide to a more safe experience before I even asked the question.
My previous post is in this thread somewhere, it was similar but went into greater detail and emphasized that this was not meant to be personal to you but more en-quizzical in nature.
Thanks again,
Ethan
This forum isn't about automobiles, laptops. or cell phones. To compare e cigs to other devices is not the point. At some point we're gonna have to act like adults here, stop the speculation, quit the excuses, and get to the bottom of this. We're gonna have to prove what we do is safe, we can do it safely around others, and it is in fact gonna be safer than the normal cigarette around others. I've been bombarded all morning with "never saw a cig blow up". I assured them they were much safer around me vaping than driving to the damned meeting and was met with what I said above. It's not about that, we don't care about that, and it doesn't matter.
I thank Roly for putting forth his experience in life, the fact he was a mod here with a ban button means nothing to me about my safety, the fact he has real life experience in all of this, NOW I'll pay attention. Ex CBer and ham?? I'm in.
Thank you for taking the time to respond to the fellows question Roly I you have my attention. You guys arguing about cars is futile. It's not the point. People aren't gonna listen to that argument and it will have in most peoples eyes (including mine) no validity to even be brought up. They'll laugh about it. It's NOT the point. Laptops and cellphones?? They're here, they're not gonna go away, so get over it. Again, Kids can buy laptops....kids can buy cellphones, they're not supposed to be able to buy E cig products.
Get a grip folks, the facts NEED to come out. All of these posts about anything else is useless banter. (including probably this one)
Regards,
Deach
I thank Roly for putting forth his experience in life, the fact he was a mod here with a ban button means nothing to me about my safety, the fact he has real life experience in all of this, NOW I'll pay attention. Ex CBer and ham?? I'm in.
Thank you for taking the time to respond to the fellows question Roly I you have my attention. You guys arguing about cars is futile. It's not the point. People aren't gonna listen to that argument and it will have in most peoples eyes (including mine) no validity to even be brought up. They'll laugh about it. It's NOT the point. Laptops and cellphones?? They're here, they're not gonna go away, so get over it. Again, Kids can buy laptops....kids can buy cellphones, they're not supposed to be able to buy E cig products.
Get a grip folks, the facts NEED to come out. All of these posts about anything else is useless banter. (including probably this one)
Regards,
Deach
Really hoping the large number of posts in this thread is noticed by the modders and vendors. There's clearly a demand for better safety features... let's hope the supply appears soon!
And btw I am TOTALLY vaping with a stupid looking cord now. I even got a 2 amp portable power supply and I can plug my PT in while I'm away from an outlet. Yes the power supply is li-ion batteries but they aren't near my face. I don't care if the cord looks dumb... if anything, it simply enhances my nerd mystique.
And btw I am TOTALLY vaping with a stupid looking cord now. I even got a 2 amp portable power supply and I can plug my PT in while I'm away from an outlet. Yes the power supply is li-ion batteries but they aren't near my face. I don't care if the cord looks dumb... if anything, it simply enhances my nerd mystique.
That's not true because lithium batteries don't explode, but they can go into thermal runaway, vent gases, and catch on fire. The cause of the explosion is when they are confined (in this case very likely a metal tube) and can't vent gases fast enough so there is a hugh build up of pressure, and then....... bang.
There is a long list of mods that have little to nothing in the way of safety for worst case scenarios. There is also a very long list of modes that have little in the way of prevention when things are not quite right. The responsibility for safety is entirely on the user.
I don't even like to use the term mod anymore as they are openly sold to anyone with the money. At this point in the game they are consumer products, and many are poorly engineered at that. We can't expect everyone who buys these things to be well versed on batteries, chargers, multi-meters, etc. You have to expect that people are going to do dumb things like overcharging batteries, having cheaply made batteries, or good batteries that have been damaged, etc. If you can't give a good measure of protection to the average consumer, who very like has little knowledge in the way of battery safety, then the moders have no business selling this stuff on the open market.
semantics again, stop using ecigs and there is a 0% chance that one will blow up, vent, thermal run away, turn into a unicorn, whatever, dont put it up to your face, your face is safe. stop using ecigs, danger averted
honestly where does end user accountability come in? before i buy ANYTHING i research the product, new tech, a tv, a computer, who cares, my money and i need to know what i need to know about a product. mod makers can only be responsible for so much before user accountability comes in. nothing is idiot proof.
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So cell phone's aren't used as much and ecigs are put up to the mouth/face way more often throughout the day? So, phone's aren't used as much and blow up more often than an ecig that's used way more often throughout the day and blows up less...
Still sounds like we're plenty safe.
I'm not saying we're not safe. I'm saying to compare phones, laptops, automobiles or anything else to ecigs is futile. They're not the same GET IT???
If you want to help promote vaping do it realistically not comparing it to things people routinely have used for way more years than vaping has been around. Your post honestly made no sense to me. Cell phones are used WAY Way more than ecigs. Phones per capita have blown up less. Look how long cell phones have been around.....now about ecigs......you're shooting yourself in the foot with posts like yours.
Thanks for piping in.
Deach
Thank You, That's am explanation I can wrap my head around.
I did think that the Ultrafire was a good battery though.
You could quite easily turn that around and say where does manufacturer accountability come in? The answer is, when this stuff is being sold at the population level. Just because you do the research, doesn't mean that it's someone else's fault if something blows up in their face because they didn't do the research.
It's all well and good saying that people should be accountable, but as Roly has explained, Murphys Law is the bottom line - and the more people that use a product, the more Murphy's law applies.
There may well be an argument that as products have become safer, and legislation tougher on manufacturers, people's ability to be accountable has been undermined. But that doesn't lessen the onus on manufacturers to make their products as safe as possible. And this is clearly something that certain manufacturers are not doing.
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