Cree light batteries - fire

[keepontriking]

***WARNING***

You could lose your house.

Lights have improved enormously over recent years with developments in LEDs and rechargeable batteries. Those who remember the Ever Ready twin cells the size of a 2lb bag of sugar and with a weight that matched wonder how they ever managed.

Quite a few people have 'discovered' cheap Cree lights available online and have been seduced by the car-headlamp power of these beasts and their attractive low price
These are usually advertised as:

CREE LED CYCLE LIGHTS XML-T6 and are sold for around £20.00

I bought some of these these after reading and hearing recommendations extolling their brightness. The output is fantastic but ...

We could have lost our house when the battery was charging in our kitchen. It seems I am not the only one to have discovered they can be potentially lethal.

Firstly one cell 'popped' and the unit fell off the worktop behind our rubbish bins. It then burst into flame before a second cell expoloded with a loud bang, sending black debris over the kitchen. One piece was stuck to the ceiling. 'Luckily' this explosion put the fire out but red hot parts were still around for us to deal with. If my son hadn't been present at the time, we probably would no longer have a roof over our heads.

Yes these cycle lights are bright, but do you want your house lit up too?

[simonineaston]

Gosh - Scary! I trust your heart-rate has come back down to normal!
Thanks for the warning...
Thinking back to those Ever Ready lamps you refer to, my unreliable memory tells me they were 'kite marked', i.e. they conformed to a British Standard, although that didn't stop them conking out if you so much as went over a bump or a drain grate. Back then I don't think I gave the notion of a standard much thought, if any. Now it suddenly seems like a Jolly Good Idea!

Old lamp pair

$_35.jpg (9.48 KiB) Viewed 7922 times

[thirdcrank]

Old lamp pair

Actually, quite a modern version of the Ever Ready products.

keepontriking

Thanks for the warning and I'm sure we're all glad that you survived to tell the tale with a roof over your head. When they talk about "weapons grade lighting" there are obviously different types of warfare: you've been subject to clandestine bombing rather than an open attack.

[Audax67]

Yikes. I have had second-source camera batteries swell alarmingly during charging, but never anything like that. Glad nothing more serious happened.

Boeing shares your pain:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/17/technol ... g-battery/

I think theirs cost a little more that £20, too.

[yakdiver]

It look like it is not an isolated case
http://forums.mtbr.com/lights-night-rid ... 37382.html

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic ... -exploding

[Stewart H]

That looks like mine too, I will be charging it outside in a metal box I think, and not for too long either.

[downfader]

Just to clarify? Are these a set of those cheap Ebay cree lights? Or a more well known make available in proper UK shops?

Most of the decent lights I use tend to have a form of mobile phone battery in them (eg Exposure, which I love). They're also encased within the housing of the light.

[wirral_cyclist]

An abused cell will go fizz and bang without being on charge, and cheap lights may have pre-abused cells from a laptop as mentioned elsewhere.
Watch this clip from 3:00 to the end - when the phone abuser ruins his lungs...

http://youtu.be/fkP-b1ADvbk

Edited to fix link

[RickH]

Don't confuse the Cree branded LEDs (that may or may not actually be in the cheap lights) with the complete lamp unit. Bear in mind too that if someone is making a profit at this price point then corners are likely to be cut somewhere. Shoddy construction combined with a power source that can catch fire or explode if shorted is not a good recipe.

There have been warnings in the news of similar problems recharging e-cigarettes including, I believe, at least one fatality!

Rick.

[thirdcrank]

The thread title refers to the batteries. I presume with this type of thing there's a lamp and if it's designed for rechargeable batteries, these may be loose or built-in and rechargeables need some sort of charger. Am I right in presuming that this is a problem with some rechargeable batteries and possibly the charging equipment? ie The Cree LED doesn't play an active part in the combustion, it's just that these torches are sometimes fitted with dodgy batteries.

[rjb]

Its worth looking at Torchy Boys website for tests on lights, batteries and chargers.
http://www.torchythebatteryboy.com/