That could have turned very nasty, glad you are ok.
I agree, I have a couple smaller Imalent lights and they are great. Just the first generation DX80 has some issues, (this one was the first gen)
Those newer models are good as far as i have understood, I had the first-generation of the DX80 which had some flaws, but i read Imalent had fixed those flaws in the 2nd generation of the DX80.
Maybe Imalent should take note, delay the MS18 release and make sure there is no gen 2 needed
Lucky you got the top off , albeit KFF Kentucky fried fingers.
Wow very interesting, i hope your finger heals well.
It will be very interesting to see what the cause was.
Get well soon.
Same shyt happened to my light, I was using with full charge, turned it off after 3 mins then mechanically locked it out. Turned it back on after 2 mins and poof, went up it smoke. I might have seen some fire but was so shocked, I was like WTF! and mechanically turned it off.
edited: this happened to my DX80
Was that this model that went off?
DX80
Imalent was quick to respond to to this incident, and they said they will ship a new DX80 or the head to me via DHL. ( May,12,2019)
That’s good news DBSAR… 
If they do not require you to send the damaged head back to them, perhaps, if you find the time, you can open up the head and try to figure out where the fire started? Always good to know where lights can fail!
That’s good to hear. It’s better if this kind of thing doesn’t happen.
But when it does, it’s nice to know the company is standing by their product fixing it fast.
best would be if imalent could pay for shipping to have the light sent back to them, thats the best thing really since they made the light they should investigate what happend…
I doubt anyone out in the public would hear back from them what the problem was if the light is sent back. And it is interesting for the flashlight community what happened.
They seen the photos of the damage i’m guessing here, and didn’t request the head to be shipped back. All its joints are glued. once i receive the replacement, i may try to get the burnt one apart to see exactly what burned on the driver. there are many parts rattling inside now, so I’m guessing it really disintegrated inside.
I wonder….would it be possible to design flashlight’s waterproofing in a way that seals when the pressure is from the outside but fails quickly when it’s from the inside?
I’m sure it is.
One already existing example is a ‘good’ usb rubber cap (the one on FT03 looks pretty good) where outside pressure helps sit it better and inside pressure just pops it off.
Something else that comes to mind is a thin elastic membrane that sits flat outside a metal plate with holes.
Pressure from the outside will stretch the membrane inside of each small hole, not braking the membrane.
Pressure from the inside will stretch the hole area of the membrane, braking it.
What came to my mind is asymmetric o-ring groove, normal on the inside but somewhat open on the outside, so it’s easy to blow out the o-ring. Zero added cost but I’m afraid of dirt accumulation on the greased o-ring.
I haven’t heard of any BLF light exploding, ever. I hope I never will. Nevertheless I think it would be good to add safety vents in case it happens one day. However something that adds cost or reduces practicality just feels like overkill…
More thoughts:
Initial guess is that the cause of the explosion is a sloppy soldering job.
Can we trust our manufacturers to do better than Imalent in this regard? I’m afraid the answer would be “no”.
Which reinforces my thinking that it would be good to think about safety vents at the time of designing new lights.
Can we program at least some of our drivers to have overcurrent shutdown? It would protect from shorts on the output side but not those before it (right?). Still seems better than nothing. I think that the answer is “no, we can’t do such shotdown without adding cost” for most drivers. But I’m not sure…
Maybe hard shutoff on severe overheat would work? Seems to be something more portable across drivers but acting slower.