Yet another explosion

[bobwho77]

There is a difference. mods should have warnings and plenty of them do. EVERY SINGLE vape shop I've bought mods from has told me about battery safety. Most of the online retailers have warnings also. The RC car hobby deals with Lipo batteries that can easily blow up a house. Lipo batteries don't have warnings (the ones I've seen) and the RC cars don't either.

Every reputable hobby shop takes the time to educate their customers about battery safety.

 

[LimJaheyyy]

Back when I bought my first mod, the ipv3li. I was told nothing about battery safety. Luckily I had you guys, mooch, and this awesome forum to educated myself to point where I've been vaping for over a year and haven't blown myself up. By the way, that vape shop is now closed. Haha.

 

[kbeam418]

Every reputable hobby shop takes the time to educate their customers about battery safety.

Every reputable vape shop will do the same. There's always going to be the one shop that doesn't. The only way to fix this kind of thing is to ban mods that have removable batteries. Warning labels will not fix it because there's always a ..... who thinks warning labels are wrong. Just like there's always one woman who will sue McDonald's for having too hot of coffee.

 

[OlderNDirt]

I just watched the video on a newscast and then watched it frame by frame. I don't know if one battery can "explode" more then once, but it looked like there were 6 or 7 "blasts". Also noticed that batteries were flying around far enough away that they all could not have been in one photo. I suppose they might have been gathered up so all could be in one photo, but makes me wonder how many loose batteries he had in that pocket.

On a side note, interesting that they used a close-up pic of a lady hitting a vape pen at the start of the segment.

 

[thetrucker]

Everybody must take responsibility to be safe and know what can hurt you........you can pull your plastic comb out of your pocket and poke your eye out if you are not

paying attention.............we can't ban everything from store shelves...................................we must ban stupidity and or lack of responsibility of the user......

 

[bobwho77]

Every reputable vape shop will do the same. There's always going to be the one shop that doesn't. The only way to fix this kind of thing is to ban mods that have removable batteries. Warning labels will not fix it because there's always a ..... who thinks warning labels are wrong. Just like there's always one woman who will sue McDonald's for having too hot of coffee.

Can't support banning any kind of hardware. Just because a few people are careless, there's no reason to tell the rest of us that we can no longer have the devices we enjoy, and use safely everyday

 

[kross8]

when we see a mod that at most can carry 3 batteries, but can count at least 5, no spare battery case, and loose change... how do you think we will react? every time this does happen, we get a bad name, people get up in arms about the dangers.. when it's user error and not the fault of the device. yes, we are going to be defensive, angry, and point out they're trying for a Darwin award... because anyone who has a true interest in vaping should have learned some battery safety.

well said,,

now we return to the 'its not your fault you didn't do research on battery safety,,,,, oh poor baby,, did you hurt yourself?.........here,, lets make all vapor pay for your booboo'

...........ugh,, 'darwin award',,,, what a way to spend your 15 minutes of fame... used to be you called a spade a spade,, now we smother the problem with pampers

 

[homeuser6]

i own and operate many things which can kill or injure-mods,guns,lathes,oxy/acetylene tanks,cars,chain saws. careful study of the hazards involved has allowed me to get older while remaining in one piece. i recommend thorough study before undertaking anything. this guy obviously did not.

 

[r77r7r]

Ya just have to put your mod in the proper pocket. I put mine in my left 'cause that's where my fire extinguisher is located. (nervous bladder and all...)

 

[CMD-Ky]

Can't support banning any kind of hardware. Just because a few people are careless, there's no reason to tell the rest of us that we can no longer have the devices we enjoy, and use safely everyday

But if it saves just one child, it will all be worth it.
/sarc, if necessary

 

[mongo74]

It's possible he bought the mod from a smoke shop...there are literally hundreds of them in NYC, and all of them have their grubby mitts in the vape phenomenon. Now, do all of them buy directly from the same distributor? Highly unlikely, and I can say with 100% confidence that lots of these places sell knock-offs, and have next to nil knowledge about IMR vs Protected cells and re-wraps. The victim is actually (his workplace) only a couple blocks away from one of those smoke shops. I'm not going to point fingers at the shop or the victim, however, as a user of such a device, he should have done his homework. If he did do his homework, heck, who knows...he may even be a member of a vaping community, and said device was a knock off or the batteries were indeed re-wraps, then it's a shame, and he should not be blamed (especially if he indeed have those spares in a case, and it melted from the heat) IF he was carrying them loose, and only he knows the truth, then shame on him.

 

[DC2]

Each of the following quotes is correct...
THE END

I respectfully disagree. Mishandling batteries is a sign of being uninformed, not a sign of being stupid. Most people toss batteries around and think nothing of it, because they have never been educated as to how much energy is stored in some batteries. I think this is changing, but I think the average person just doesn't know.

If you have no reason to believe that there's hidden dangers in the product that you're purchasing and if the retailer failed to give any warnings, it's not the fault of the user. What if the user was an elderly person who doesn't use the internet? You assume too much.

People need to be educated that there's a difference with the batteries that we use in vaping. Why is this so hard to understand?

 

[DC2]

It's funny when people compare battery dangers to chainsaws or lawnmowers or driving a car or using a drill press or any of a dozen other things that are OBVIOUSLY dangerous to any human being. But battery safety is kind of like eating raw chicken. It's not knowledge you are born with. It's not automatic. It needs to be known before it can be avoided.

 

[sofarsogood]

Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt

I find it funny how the most judgmental types quick to condem with only the most superficial knowledge are just to stunted intellectually to even realize how limited their own knowledge really is.

Anyway, maybe the guy was carrying loose spares, but it had nothing to do with what happened here, as dumb as that move was.

My guess, and by guess I mean I'm 99% certain that this was yet another power mosfet failure. Mosfets are what the current flows through, depending on which one fails you get battery voltage to the coils or a dead short. Buck and boost mosfets respectively.

On a mosfet failure, which can happen while in use or some random amount of time after use, it doesn't matter if the device is locked, turned off, if batteries are in the device battery voltage goes to the coil, period. In the case of a boost mosfet failing, again it doesn't matter if the device is on/off, locked, or even if an atty is screwed on because it creates a dead short to ground.

Basically when a mosfet fails you can pretty much throw out every protection offered by the PMIC. This is just the way buck/boost circuits work and why you'll just about always find a fuse when the source of power could cause damage. About the only time you won't see fusing is where the power source can't deliver enough power to cause any further harm. This is introductory circuit design 101, about as basic as it gets.

On 18650s run in series or devices using 3S Lipos, we're talking 7.2V to 12V nominal and about 200A of available fault current. Its a lot of power. Omitting fuses given these power sources is unforgivably bad design, it may (depending on country) even be in violation of established standards for consumer products. Given that most sub-ohm builds and TC builds average well below 0.3 ohms and that a buck mosfet fail dumps battery voltage to the coil, the math is simple.

One guy made a crack about how most ECFers have several ticking time bombs sitting on their shelves like the idea is preposterous, but he was absolutely right even if he lacked the breadth of knowledge to realize it.

Yeah, if you bought a high power YiHi, Sigelei, Asmodus, Smok, Eleaf, P4U to name a few, if you push it to anywhere near its limits, a failed mosfet is among the most common failure modes and what happened to that guy can just as easily happen to you.

So if you like to sub-ohm or do high power TC builds, and like buying Chinese electronics, don't be surprised when it happens to you, and don't be surprised if the other jackals here viciously turn on you and blame you for it either.

As it stands, Evolv is the only game in town that I can definitively say does anything about it. They've got a 25A fuse where power reaches the board. If it blows, you can simply replace the fuse and if it was just a mosfet that went bad the board is easily reparable as opposed to a melted mess and potentially a thermal runaway blowing up in your face.

I've been saying it all along, but the way this community reacts to product failures is an utter disgrace and going to hurt vaping. Viciously attacking victims in attempts to squash the notion there might be something wrong with a product rather than trying to figure out what went wrong and compel companies to fix it does nothing to correct the situation. It makes things worse, much worse.

Be prepared for a lot more negative press as 200W mods get to about a year or two old and a lot of those mosfets start wearing out on unfused boards.

To summarize. No fuse protection with 3x the old voltages and resistances as low as 0.1 ohms and mosfets prone to failure dumping battery voltage to the coils and most of you blame the victim....

...common sense definitely isn't.

Thanks for that description of a potential safety issue that's new to me. You're saying a mod with battery installed could be sitting on a shelf, unused and spontaneously short and melt down the battery unless there is a fuse to stop it from happening and may be any of us could be carrying mods without that fuse. Would this risk exist the same in mods with built in batteries? Would you propose that we should remove the battery from any mod not being used so this can't happen and discard mods with built in batteries? Should we be writing to the manufacturers of our mods and asking if there are fuses or other protections to prevent the kind of failure you describe?

Having said all that I've yet to read or hear about a mod venting while it was sitting on a shelf. They always seem to be charging or in use or in a pocket. Charging aside, when facts are available injury accidents are almost always about loose batteries with unprotected terminals or mech mods.

 

[mongo74]

I was the one that made that uneducated crack. -_-

 

[Mike 586]

Exactly. If a failed mosfet can cause such a thermal runaway/hard short circuit/pmic failure, why not install a fuse as a first line of defense?

Why not install a fuse? For pretty much the same reason Remington did nothing about its faulty design for 70 years, preferring to settle the occasional civil suit than spend 5 more cents on a thousand dollar product. Most companies don't use fuses because doing it right would cost more than settling lawsuits, basically because it makes them more money.

If the competition used top notch fuses like Evolv does we're talking under 40 cents per board. That's what it really boils down to and one of the big points I'm trying to make. Saving 40 cents per board is more lucrative than keeping customers safe.

Also, I totally botched what I said about the boost mosfet and how it would fail.

That's what I get for working from memory and mixing up past and current boards...

....oops Now I really do feel like a dummy for not at least looking at a drawing first.

For things to behave as I described them both mosfets would have to go bad on a board with buck boost circuitry.

But come to think of it I'm not sure if most 200W mods even use boost circuitry at all since most have 9V minimum requirements to function. Maybe some of the dual 18650 ones, but I said my piece about that subject a year ago, those products were either listing bogus specs or blatantly ignoring safe design practices. IHMO both and thus write-offs not worth consideration.

 

[mongo74]

So basically, for both mosfets on buck boost circuited boards to go asunder, one would have to push said circuitry to the max repeatedly. Correct? I, personally, would never push any mod past the CDR of said installed batteries anyway. To each their own I suppose. SO, if the majority of us are NOT pushing our mods to the max, we do not have powered down "ticking time bombs" on our shelves...

 

[sofarsogood]

Why not install a fuse? For pretty much the same reason Remington did nothing about its faulty design for 70 years, preferring to settle the occasional civil suit than spend 5 more cents on a thousand dollar product. Most companies don't use fuses because doing it right would cost more than settling lawsuits, basically because it makes them more money.

If the competition used top notch fuses like Evolv does we're talking under 40 cents per board. That's what it really boils down to and one of the big points I'm trying to make. Saving 40 cents per board is more lucrative than keeping customers safe.

Also, I totally botched what I said about the boost mosfet and how it would fail.

That's what I get for working from memory and mixing up past and current boards...

....oops Now I really do feel like a dummy for not at least looking at a drawing first.

For things to behave as I described them both mosfets would have to go bad on a board with buck boost circuitry.

But come to think of it I'm not sure if most 200W mods even use boost circuitry at all since most have 9V minimum requirements to function. Maybe some of the dual 18650 ones, but I said my piece about that subject a year ago, those products were either listing bogus specs or blatantly ignoring safe design practices. IHMO both and thus write-offs not worth consideration.

You're not going to put the genie back in the bottle so easily. Now that the subject is raised we should get to the bottom of it. I believe I posted a video in this thread about a visit to a battery factory. One of the things I learned from that is they store their finished batteries for a significant amount of time before shipping apparently because if there is going to be a spontaneous failure of an li battery it's going to happen during the early part of it's life so keep it some place safe until it's unlikely to happen. So I want to buy batteries from brands with a reputation to protect and who use factories at least this careful.

The same goes for mods. I buy from well known names who know that one bad screwup could ruin their brand and I believe they have the know how and resources to keep it from happening. Do we take an issue like yours to pbusardo and ask him to ask several of the manufacturers, who he knows well, to tell us what they do to keep our mods safe to own? In the mean time, there must be a lot of VTC minis and Picos out there. Has even one of them hurt anybody?

 

[vapomike]

I believe in KISS and Occam's Razor.... 3 battery mod.... 5 batteries... 0 battery cases... loose change...

The simplest explanation here is loose change shorted the batteries. These batteries have been in use in the fashion we use them for years in high powered lighting devices. (Headlamps, flashlights, worklights and so on) People need to educate themselves about any source of power they are using. The lighting industry does a much better job of educating consumers than the vape industry ime. Granted there are a lot more nerds that understand electricity in that field. Could things go wrong even when someone does everything right... Sure ask any paramedic. But the last 3 explosions I have heard about have been naked unprotected batteries in either pockets or purses with coins keys and etc. The statistics and evidence point to this being user error. And until people learn to use these:

We're going to continue to hear about idiots blowing up pockets and purses.

 

[thetrucker]

I tore apart an old laptop computer and found.... .12 -a dozen...............18650 green batteries in the battery pack..............

can you imagine.........some person somewhere... man or woman.........and he or she says..............boy O boy.........

these batteries sound really dangerous I would never use anything like this............" I don't want them to explode on me"

.................and all this time...........the person has.............a dozen of these batteries in their lap top

which is sitting on their lap in the easy chair................................as they read this horrendous news about

this terrible new kind of battery called.........a vaporizer/electronic cigarette....or vaping Pen....that for no reason

explodes in peoples pockets......

This makes me laugh..........................every laptop has either 9 or 12 of these batteries contained in a flat

battery pack ..................................