The big squares look like inductors.
It it would be interesting to have a picture of a "non burned" driver for comparison
Nice disaster pics…. 
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Wow. That is a fairly impressive cascade failure. You’re right, there was definitely some high-current arcing in there. If you hadn’t quickly unscrewed the light, it could really have snowballed.
Those grey squares are usually inductors. Looking at the upper centre of the first photo, it looks like there was an inductor there at the epicentre of the failure. My first thought was an internal short in the inductor coil, but the loose inductor you show in the third photo looks too intact for that (I’d expect it to have blown apart and look like a worse version of the broken inductor with the wires hanging out at the centre-right of the first photo).
Pure speculation, but I’m wondering if there was a bad solder joint to the inductor in the third photo - one contact looks better than the other. A bad solder joint would heat up under load and could well melt the solder into creating a short. Flash vaporisation would then blow the inductor off the board, causing other components to fail because the circuit was no longer operating as designed.
Another possibility would be a PCB track under the inductor that was damaged or too thin, so it had too high a resistance and heated up under load. If that gets to the point of a thermal runaway, it can vaporise the track and possibly kick off more shorts and failures next to it.
I have to say, I’m surprised Imalent didn’t ask you to send the head back. If I were an Imalent engineer, I’d definitely want it on my bench for a post-mortem comparison with both an undamaged driver and an unpopulated PCB.
I’m also surprised it wasn’t the electrolytic capacitor (still intact at the lower right of the first photo). In my experience, things going pop like that are most often down to a failed capacitor.
Just came across this thread….scary stuff
Glad that nothing worse happened and good also to see Imalent do the right thing
Where did the replacement light ship from? You got it very fast.
They shipped it via DHL priority. (was less than a week arrived.
If I where the manufacturer, I’d want that head back pronto, and try and figure out why it burned. Seems strange they don’t care.
I’m glad minor burns was as bad as it got. I have to say I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often. Or maybe it does and we just don’t hear about it? It makes me think I should loosen all my tail caps when I leave the house, if that were to happen when no one is around it could burn the house down.
The photos probably helped determine its likely a component failure or bad trace/solder point. its likely an isolated incident, as like any electronic component, every now & then a bad one fails. Remember the 7880 20-mode driver fire i had a few years ago in a single AA light? that little firecracker went off like july-4th on three NiMH AA cells in parallel.
I started loosening the caps months ago just in case. Something none of us want to think about, but we know there will always be a certain risk that we have to live with whether we like it or not.
Same here. Better safe than sorry. Pretty much the only light that’s “live”, is the light I actual carry.
All my lights come with batteries, and almost all the Li-ion ones are mechanical locked out.
Unless that’s not possible, like Cu, Ti, and SS lights, and lights with flaky matte ano.
Those lights I store with a plastic disk between tailspring and anode.
Most of them are in the same place (cupboards). If one battery goes rogue, it will be like the 4th of july.
ALL my tail caps are loosened in my smaller lights[Initial reasons are parasitic drain and accidental activation] and my bigger lights[3 or 4 batteries w/ carriers] have the batteries in big pill bottle w/ silica gel packet,until I use them. I also have silica gel packets in ALL the body tubes. I started this in 2013 when condensation became an issue w/ some of my lights,starting w/ the TK75 which I started and what turned out to be a massive thread for a few years[CPF]
NOW after reading this thread I have another and BETTER reason to loosen tail caps! :sunglasses:
my god
My DX80 blew up again, WTF!
I mechanically locked it out before use because the damn button is so easy to turn on. I twisted the light and tried to turn it back on, smoke went to the glass, light stinks and now dead, SUCKSSS!
sigh…. guess they should switch name, from Imalent to Imminent death instead… :person_facepalming: really ditch that crap and buy it a better brand like olight,acebeam etc with better warranties and quality. its awful how it can happen a second time… their QA is worse then any other brand i know off today.
if that was an american brand u could have sue them for huge money, but since they are from china they can produce whatever crap and get away with it…
Wow,I am sorry to hear that. My friend had the same light. It did not blow up but had all kinds of issues and was inoperable.From his experience alone, and I have heard of others, I decided never to get that brand.
My Olight, Thrunite, Fenix, Convoy have had zero issues. Great customer service for replacement parts[Holster and cigar rings] that were given to me for free! 
wow sounds like a similar incident to what happened to mine… can you post any photos of the damage?
I just took pictures but posting them, forget it, third party and shrinking them, too much work.
Why does this have to happen again?
How many drivers shorts have to happen for this to be fixed?
I would try Olight since they have customer service in the USA that is great and they don’t sell pipe bombs.
Or you know what they say… third time’s a charm. Of course that one could either work, or kill you. Not sure.
You will only get 25,000 lumens out of Olight, but some people know when to quit.