Sofirn SP36 spewed toxic chemicals throughout my entire house

Is the cause known or is there no chance to learn from the defective unit?

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… :frowning:

Cheers to everyone for their feedback and to Jake for reporting the issue in the first place.

^ I’ll second that last sentence.

Thanks a lot for your immediate and professional support Sofirn! :+1: :beer:

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 :open_mouth:

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?

So is this an all-clear to autopsy the stinky carcass?

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?

Many thanks!

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.

The more you pay the more it’s worth

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.

If one was sneaky one could take the double refund from sofirn AND do the amazon return :wink:

What a generous offer Den! :+1: Happy to chip in $5 towards the shipping cost / or a :beer: / 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!

:+1: :+1: :+1:

I know this sounds extreme, but if my phone doesn’t improve soon I’m going to replace it. I would have difficulty believing this as well, but just from plugging the charger into it it emits such a strong smell that it makes us nauseous and leave some weird metallic taste in our mouths. Whatever this thing vented is extremely toxic. Washing my phone, putting it in a Ziploc bag full of activated charcoal, putting it in a Ziploc bag full of baking soda nothing is really working.

As it stands now they have refunded me 30 extra dollars rather than twice the price which I guess is an Amazon limitation. Because this is done through Amazon I don’t think there is any possibility of a double return. I would legitimately write a check for a few grand if I could have the option of not going through this and not being exposed to this stuff. If I do have to replace my phone that is a massive hassle for me because of the amount of work I do from my phone. Aside from the fact that it will cost me about $800.

I sent them a second message about my other return. I’ll report back as to what they tell me. When I speak to them I can tell they run a business and they are doing their best to be empathetic about the situation. I understand that that’s really all I can expect in a situation like this with a Chinese manufacturer, and I appreciate them at least communicating with me here. Aside from being hugely more expensive in every other way manufacturing things in a first world country means you have liability. It means thorough testing is important. It means only selling safe products is important.

I think the problem with sofirn getting into bed with thousand postcount keyboard warrior forum members is a lot of these guys get their self worth from being tough on the internet. Even though they are fanboys of this brand they are really not doing sofirn any favors by patronizing me. They also aren’t doing other members here any favors who want to get to the bottom of this. 20 years ago I was involved in coding for some of the original message board software. I’ve been on my share of forums. A lot of these guys with massive post counts who I have met in real life are often introvert weirdo people. Yes I have only posted 39 posts or whatever it is. Yes I have only been here for a single topic and that is my only interest here. Who cares? The 100 most powerful people in the world, the 100 richest people in the world and the 100 most intelligent people in the world all have one thing in common. Their post count is 0. No one gives a s* about your post count and no one ever will - not even fellow thousand count keyboard warriors.

I appreciate everyone who has been genuinely helpful here. I feel like this forum could probably use more aggressive moderating.

It doesn’t. At least try to keep calm. This tone will bring you nowhere.