Thank you guys all be nice and helpful here. Jake sent order ID and refund was applied for him. We will fix this via PM.
Egineer told there was no need to send back the defective unit because it’s apparently dead.
While egineer will do more tests on SP36S lights to find out the risk. Sofirn is trying best to avoid this issue happen again.
Sorry for all the inconveniences caused by sofirn. sofirn is a small brand and a small company but always want to listen to customers and improve the products.
Different people have different thoughts or perspectives. That’s why we want to communicate and exchange thoughts. That’s why the world is full of vitality. We hope everyone don’t take this case personally.
Once again, we apologize for issues caused by sofirn. Sofirn is taking this case seriously. We will tell when the engineer give outcome of the test. This will be the last reply in this thread by sofirn.
Thanks Sofirn, we really can’t wait to find out what it was.
Since Sofirn won’t do the autopsy, is there any chance anyone else would be interested in doing it independently? Unfortunately my understanding is pretty limited so I can’t offer to do this but I do think that if an autopsy isn’t performed on the light we’ll never know for sure…
Cheers to everyone for their feedback and to Jake for reporting the issue in the first place.
A very strange response. If I were an e(n)gineer I would at least like to see a good detailed picture of the damage on the component side of the driver (like DBSAR’s picture of the Imalent driver), or better receive the light back to see what happened. Apparently being a flashlight enthousiast is radically different from being a Sofirn engineer
Exactly. Their support is great so far but the thing with any manufacturer is that even if they do check a flashlight, there’s no guarantee you’ll get full disclosure of the cause (could open liability issues too). An independent reviewer could be brutally honest.
Let’s hope it was only an isolated incident because many of us have this light. I have used the built in charger only once on mine and it was fine. Components fail with any product. So far, only 2 bad ones have been reported out of probably thousands out there. Anyone hear of other failures?
Where should we be looking for the outcome of the engineer’s further testing of this model? Apparently the spec is listed as 5 volts for charging. This is wrong or incomplete. USB C device charging is clearly a complicated situation for all flashlight and or device manufacturers. So listing specs that are wrong or incomplete or misleading or not listing specs all have consequences. I don’t see an easy solution moving forward. I will try to avoid devices with multiple removable batteries.
Jake, if Sofirn doesn’t want the stinky unit, would you be happy to send it off to any volunteering BLFers for a thorough analysis?
It would be great to get to the bottom of this as we all have flashlights that may carry the culprit cause… Just so we can take our measures and perhaps figure out exactly what evaporated in your home?
One more point, I think anyone using onboard charging should pick up a USB meter to keep check of voltage and current. My Sp36 terminated at 4.23 volts, a little high but not terrible. The current was about 2 amps or a little less and it decreased slowly. That doesn’t mean it can’t self destruct next time but so can any charger for that matter.
As I posted on BLF in the past, my SP36 charged to 4.25 the one and only time I used the internal charger. I didn’t consider it unsafe, just not conducive to long battery life.
I’ve done about all the recreational typing I need to on this subject, but just to close up a loose end: yes, you should be afraid of having a huge box of li-ion cells charging under your bedroom in the garage.
Please ask Sofirn to post here and let us know what they discover.
I suspect Sofirn has limited resources to diagnose failures like this. And, judging from my readings on this forum, I’m quite certain there are many folks on here that are better at diagnosing complex failures than 95% of the flashlight companies.
At this point, I think Sofirn has done more than I would have expected, and Jake should be happy with their offer. It’s extremely unreasonable to expect Sofirn to compensate him for a renovation to his house or whatever he is or isn’t asking for. (Hard to tell exactly what he wants Sofirn to do.)
If Jake does not want to take the light apart to investigate, or send it to Sofirn, I ask that he ship tot me to disassemble to to investigate what happened and show photos (in macro detail). Jake, I will offer to pay for shipping to me, (Ontario, Canada) to research to what happened to the light, if you don’t want to take it apart yourself to look into it. I can do a neutral video on the findings to why the light overheated and caused the burning smell.
What a generous offer Den! :+1: Happy to chip in $5 towards the shipping cost / or a / Den as I’d benefit from the peace of mind that would come from this! (have a SP36 BLF Anduril on the way)
Jake, you’ve had an offer from Sofirn that you rarely see from manufacturers and another offer from Den (DBSAR) who’s a real rocket scientist for flashlights and lanterns - he’s your best shot at getting to the bottom of this!
Jake, please consider taking Den up on his offer to save others from your fate or worse!
