Glad to hear it wasn’t the battery.
Sounds like rather than trying to disassemble the light further you should contact Imalent. M4D M4X says they are very interested in investigating the cause. Hopefully they will also repair or replace your light as well as ensuring that this doesn’t happen again in other lights.
On the upside, we have now identified another advantage of USB charging in flashlights: The USB cover serves as an emergency vent. 
Can you post a photo of the threads on the battery cap & battery tube?
Thanks for the pictures, that looks rather frightening. Imagine this happened in a car while driving or similar.
The threads are ok, but dirty now from the smoke gassing past them, it blew the upper o ring out though.
ok thanks, i sent them an inquiry on my incident.
more photos:
showing the melted copper traces & burned driver board, ( the area under the plastic cap) I can not get the driver or head apart, even with a strap wrench, and will wait until i hear back from Imalent…
The upper o-ring had failed, and hot smoke blew past the threads.
resulting smoke burn to my fingers.
wow, that looks bad. I am so glad you are OK
Terrifying. So this was just a QC fail?
Glad it was not more serious.
I have heard so many bad things about this manufacturer[add another],It is a wonder people still buy these lights. 
I have no idea… the head of this light is glued very solid, so i can;t get it apart to see what failed, but either way the driver is burnt to a crisp, and parts now are lose inside and rattle around. it made a hiss with some crackling & a popping noise before i managed to get the battery tube off it to stop the smoke from spraying out of it.
Imalent might try some funny business if you keep trying to disassemble the light.
See this thread:
https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/54892
VOB did a full tear down and the only way to access the driver was to completely destroy the head of the light
Imalent may try to claim foul play if you start ripping pieces apart that they’ve purposefully designed to never come apart
I only tried to loosen the driver ring once, then stopped as i know its best to leaf it as is until they get back to me.
I wonder what would be the best way to present your case to them? If you present yourself as an average ignorant consumer they could try to take advantage of your “ignorance” and give you the runaround. On the other hand, if you make it clear you are a flashlight expert that is active on a large forum, they might think you were monkeying around with something on the light.
Didn’t know drivers can catch fire. I hope they figure out what caused it. With the MS18 with 8×21700 high drain cells, it would be even more dangerous. I’m planning to buy the MS18 and R90TS too.
I think we’re all really interested in how Imalent is going to respond to this.
Basically a week or two before they launch their mothership $700-$800 100,000 lumen light, their two year old flagship that’s still for sale nearly blows up.
I can’t help but think that it’s just a plain bad decision to drop any more money on this brand. I get mfg defects but a mega light almost blowing up… like someone mentioned, what if that had happened to someone other than you and they would’ve just dropped it and run… I assume it could’ve caught fire internally and it’s only so much heat before those cells vent…
lol other cheap Chinese mfgs have sharp edges and fake drivers that just don’t work or fail. Blowing up after you’ve completed a full recall… That’s another level!
I believe Martin has already contacted Imalent regarding the issue and that they’re aware of the circumstances & that the owner is a member on BLF
It is difficult to know how to approach Imalent on this case. They are aware that the DX80 has some serious failure issues form past incidents, but in my case my light as indicated in my past topics & posts on the DX80 has indicated i left this light completely stock without modifying it in any way. Also they can know that a well known flashlight user member of a well known forum who got injured by their defective DX80 can also damage their already fragile reputation with back lash. my fingers are still stinging a bit from the hot smoke gas from it.
The battery pack on this light can provide nearly 50+ amps at 15 volts to a shorting driver, and in a air tight enclosed capsule like the head of the DX80 it can be a bad situation with a ton of arcing and a fire building up pressure. (its what happened here)
Me neither. Although I guess it’s a small relief to know that it wasn’t a Li-Ion fire, which would be flat out terrifying. (I also own a DX80, gift.)
if i had not quickly un-threadded the battery tube to release the building pressure in the head and cut off the current, (which is where the venting hot smoke burned my hand) it would have likely blown out the lens sending glass shrapnel forward, or worse.