I am giving my son in law a led light I bought from Amazon with unprotected batteries. I don’t assume he will pay much attention to my cautions on charging the batteries.
Should I: A. epoxy the charger inside a five gallon metal bucket?
B. buy him protected cells?
C: trust him to listen to me.
If the answer is B, where is the cheapest fastest place to buy protected cells?\
Thanks
Which light? which cells?
In which country do you live?
Sorry, guess it would be helpful to give a little information….
Live in Missouri USA. 18650 cells. It is a SecurityIng 1600LM XM-L T6 LED Headlamp
Thanks
Buy him protected cells and a reliable charger (like an xtar), and show him pictures of vented cells so he takes you seriously.
Both Illumn.com and mtnelectronics.com have good prices and fast shipping. Fasttech.com has slightly cheaper prices for cells, but you’ll be waiting 45 days to get them.
I’m not sure what percentage of people on here charge in a metal bucket/ammo box/charging bag
I found this light on a search. Is this the one? http://www.amazon.com/Outdoor-Waterproof-Headlamp-SecurityIng-Rechargeable/dp/B00H1MAPW8
If so get him quality protected cells no matter what. He’ll be wearing them on the back of his head.
It is almost identical to that one.
I have one also, maybe I should get protected cells as well. I am careful not to over drain always put them in a metal bucket to charge.
He won’t do either.
Maybe once or twice, he worries about absolutely nothing. I need to be a little more like that…
Mod with a driver with low voltage protection ?
I would still get protected cells to protect against a short in a cheap light
Sure…
Maybe he only has this one 
You could show him these two threads, but it might have the effect that he won’t want to touch the light…
http://www.trailscotland.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9462
If it is THAT light with THOSE chargers and batteries >>> first thing is to throw both of those away. BAD BAD BAD!!! Ultrafire is junk.
Then do as recommended, good charger with protected cells.
I do have that exact light, VERY bright.
Ok sounds like I need 4 batteries and two chargers.At least.
I have a bunch of dangerous lights. Or batteries.
My Jacob A60 is my favorite, but don’t have good batteries. I tore into a Lenmar battery pack for a Acer computer and salvaged 8 18650s. Are they any good?
Been charging them on el cheapo charger. I know they are not protected.
NCR18650BD-PROT are these any good from mtnelectronics $9.65 each?
XTAR-VC2 chargers $19.90 each?
Does Amazon have anything safe and cheap? I have Amazon prime. Also would like to have pretty quick.
I can give them to him at Christmas and take the bad bad bad ones away when I get good one :bigsmile:
I haven’t really worried about setting my head on fire, I figured it would get pretty hot before it burst into flames. But maybe not
those are good batteries. the danger usually isn’t when they’re in the light (except if they short out somehow, then it will happen very fast) the danger is if they are discharged too low, and then you try to charge them, or if your charger over-charges them.
Amazon will have decent prices on chargers, but not so much on the batteries. For a simple order of batteries and charger, mtn electronics is very fast anyways. And from what i’ve seen, almost all xtar chargers are very good. As for batteries, almost any protected panasonic or sanyo from a reputable seller will be good. Richard at mtn only sells good stuff. If you have questions, you can ask them here: MTN Electronics: LEDs - Batteries - Lights - Chargers - Hosts - Drivers - Components - 1-Stop-US Source
Rubber pad might insulate it until it goes ballistic?
if you have some calipers, you might measure the battery slot in the headlamp. Some protected batteries are too long to fit in everything. That’s partly why I recommended the xtar chargers, they fit the longer batteries.
if a cell gets a sudden hard short it goes nuclear in seconds.
i did a nail test on a cell here on video.
about 1.5 seconds from short to WHOOOSH!!! and it flying away.cheap light with whateverfire battery with cheap charger dramatically increases the odds of disaster!
UltraFire, TrustFire, TangsFire, SuperFire, StartFire, CatchFire, HouseFire, HeadOnFire
By the way, you know those multiple-cell power boxes?
They have cells in parallel.
If you have one cell or more in the box, put in the right way,
and then you accidentally put the next cell in the wrong way,
that’s a short circuit.
you have maybe a half a second or less to get the wrong’un back out before the springs melt, or worse.
You have to watch this stuff all the time.