Seems more convenient than typical bags, don’t know about the price of this lipo charge box / storage
and these storage boxes
The fireproof bag is certainly a good idea if the worst happens, asis doing it outside under cover say garage, covered patio ec. Might be overkill otherwise. Insurance is like that though. A complete waste of money until you need it.
Cheaply made lipo bags do not contain the fire, they just burn through. Either go for a brand name lipo bag or if you want to spend less, get a metal cashbox. You could add a ceramic tile inside the bottom of the cashbox. Not necessary but if you keep the box on a vulnerable surface it will prevent heat damage to the surface.
Be aware, besides the fire risk, the gas li-ions vent is nasty shit. Hydrogen fluoride / hydrofluoric acid. Don’t breath it.
Even people who always keep an eye on charging li-ions should charge in a metal box. If it “vents with flame” you want to be able to just run, not worry about flames catching anything.
Somewhere recently I saw pictures — a single li-ion cell that had gone cattywampus, and burned right through a thin sheet metal cookie tin.
Yep, but a cash box is not a cookie tin. Those things are like paper. Thinner than a tin can.
It was this li-ion that went off in someone’s garage. budgetlightforum.com/node/35988
Check out the guy just standing in the cloud, breathing HF, penetrating into skin and lung tissue. Plus that camera man in there too.
Isn’t a waterproof housing like a pipe bomb?
I like these storage boxes, if there is one which has nice room 18650s with plasticboxes I woukd buy one. I already asked some vendors months back if they can check for that but never got any useful replies.
These bags have glass fibers in them which doesn’t burn through and still allowing to vent.
Ammo box , they are cheap, solid, and often can be latched in closed but non hermetic position, as seen in my setup below (18650 for scale) :
Nice!. That is definitively an overkill for my charging needs, but I would take it. Problem is, I guess impossible to get it in my country for average Joes.
Sure you can, they are readily available in any military surplus in Spain.
Why not just buy a cheap orange ceramic flower pot, that’s what I use? Compared to metal boxes - non conducting and ceramic is an insulator too. Can’t cover it while charging, though because you might have heat issues. Buy a deeper/bigger pot depending on your safety needs.
Just found this option googling too - ceramic tile and concrete blocks:
Hmmm I have looked around a little, can get ammo boxes in Craiglist-like ad sites for about 15-20Eur plus shipping. That is about 3 bags of my first link, not exactly a bargain. Somebody said that these bags were not safe unless from know brands, any review or proof to support that?
> Somebody said that these bags were not safe unless from know brands, any review or proof to support that?
And which known brands are known to be safe?
EDIT — well YouTube has a lot on this already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEkewCjiDs0
and it will show you related info as well.
I’m not yet sure of the answer about where to find a known reliable safety bag but at least I know there’s a lot of dangerous crappy fake ones out there.
Imagine my surprise.
EDIT — well, here’s one place that will replace yours if you have a fire, and a quote from a customer who was using
their bag inside a flowerpot:
and they have videos showing fairly large batteries being overcharged, first in the open (big fireballs) and then inside the bags — lots of smoke, but their bags did contain the flames.
Of course the smoke’s going to send you to the hospital too.
Makes me think all our fancy chargers really ought to be two-part devices — the electronics, and an extension cord, and a sacrificial battery holder to put inside a fire safe bag.
No point in burning up a good charger just because a battery decides to catch fire.
Wait a minute here.
You are going to charge and store your cells in fireproof containers and then you are going to take those charged cells and put them in flashlights, sometimes very high drain flashlights and you are going to turn them on and hold them, while they heat up so hot you cannot touch them? And you think you are safety minded?
I don't know, but somehow, I'm missing just what the safety aspect here is.
It's bad if my garage burns down, but it's OK if I get burned, blown up or die from toxic fumes, from something I carry on my person. Hmmm....
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You know I gotta stir the pot, can't help it. Common sense tells me anything that will burn, blow up or create toxic gas, from erratic changes in voltage/amperage, or from heat, just doesn't make sense to me. I know, cell phones and tablets. Well, cell phones are low drain, at least mine is, since it's really just a phone, not a video machine or a texting monster, but it still has a lithium battery in it. Tablets? Well, I have a lot of doubts about them, since I've seen the insides of some of them. Not pretty, but still, probably safer than my flashlights.
Modding li-ion flashlights is like asking for bad things to come to you. 
Just sayin.
One way to raise failure risk for li-ions is — heat cycling. Get them hot, cool, hot, cool —- bad juju.
So I completely agree with OldLumens on this.
Pushing output to where the battery temperature cycles up and down is, for sure, raising the frequency of failure.
That’s known.
Like we say in earthquake country:
it’s not IF, It’s WHEN, and whether you’re there WHEN it happens, that matters for you.
Pushing the envelope is one thing.
Pushing an irritable sleeping beast, though, is a different thing.
I discovered recently that what we call “18650” size is also called: 4/3AA, in NiMH cells.
Here, for example: http://www.batteryjunction.com/titanium-4-3af-nimh-4500.html
I’m hunting for drivers that will use a 1.2v NiMH cell — so I can use the 4/3AA cells in flashlights built for 18650 size cells
Li-ions are suited for vaporizing stuff, like nicotine, chromium, tin, nickel, silica …. and they’re pushing that.
We’re here for flashlights — light.
Heat is lost opportunity, not a desirable result, for us.
The safety aspect is crystal clear to me, as I understand it when charging the batteries is the moment of maximum failure (as in explosion/venting) risk, due to 1) the nature of the charging reaction and the possibility of shorting in previously damaged cells 2) the time that such risk is sustained during prolonged charges and 3) the fact that charging is usually carried out indoors and difficult to supervise 100% along the entire process. Thus, a reasonable risk policy should focus on that operation. In the remote event that a battery shorts and vents while you are holding it during use, dropping it away should take about a nanosecond and damage should be neglectable compared to an open fire in your home. This does not mean that there is not risk (has that ever happened BTW?), but to me it seems lower than the possibility of being struck by lightning if you received a warning and saw it coming in advance.
Frankly I don’t see your point, maybe should I stop using lipos at all because there is SOME risk even when charging with all possible precautions? Should I stop being cautious because even doing so there is not 0 risk?. Lipos are everywhere, from the hybrid cars we drive to the planes weI catch and the computers everywhere, let’s not get paranoid and just accept and manage reasonable risks for the benefits of our exciting toys.
So thanks Hank for the link, I’ll avoid the cheap bags and try to get a metal box with a tile at the bottom
Slightly OT, but I just received these a couple of weeks ago.
http://www.dx.com/p/3w-5w-20-mode-regulated-circuit-board-for-flashlights-7880#.VI9YEdKUeSo
Pulling over 3A from a single Eneloop. Dropped one into a P60 XM-L and was mighty impressed.
> the moment of maximum failure
Why do you think so? I’m seriously curious.
Most of the cautions I see refer to slow crystal growth eventually puncturing the membrane that separates the chemicals, at which point they react — which is why they’re to be recycled not put into trash.
Yes, they can be made to vent and catch fire — overcharging, or damage by dropping or crumpling, or hitting with a hammer also will likely breach the membrane, and make dramatic YouTube videos.
But the caution about thermal cycling — getting them hot, cooling, heating, cooling — is about rapidly aging the components, which degrades the membrane and speeds up crystal growth. Basically you’re not increasing the “moment of maximum failure” — rather by running cells hot in flashlights at high rates, you’re raising the risk of eventual failure. It’s like keeping old cells around too long, when you know the risk of failure is higher and higher over time. Running them with heating cycles ages them faster.
That happens is in these e-cigarette inhalers, where you’ll see people overdriving the devices to heat more and faster. We’re seeing reports of heavy metals coming out in the vapor — they’re overheating the metal and it’s coming off the heating wires into the vapor. Wanta bet the batteries get hot each time with that kind of use?
And where do we see the reports of battery failure with explosion and fire in the news? While being used, handheld, near the face.
The lithium-ion tech is still early, still changing very fast, and the factories churning out the cheap ones are not the ones making things safer.
Hey, I’m an old guy, most of the things that kill people have missed me so far, or I’ve dodged them.
I flew hang gliders for quite a few years, had a good time, had some friends die of it over the years, and I kept flying — yeah, you weigh the reward and consider the risk.
But the lesson from aviation is to do nothing that adds to the risk — that in most accidents the first mistake is made long before the crash happens.
Ditto for this kind of thing. Used carefully, one cell at a time, not mistreated, and recycled when no longer used, lithium-ions are tolerably rewarding.
Overdriving them til they’re hot, over and over? Multiple cell lights? Strapping one to your head? Not so much likely a good idea.
Don’t forget: li-ions get older faster when they’re heat cycled; cheap ones are cheaply made, and
— if one fails — above all — don’t inhale.
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I’m looking for drivers for 1xAA NiMH cells, to use 4/3AA cells in today’s flashlights
You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.
But I’ve got quite a few flashlights now that like to change to handle the safer chemistry, so I can give them to people without worrying about adding risk.
People who aren’t going to try to make them crazy bright, but who want good reliable lights.
see the 3 reasons in my post above.
But anyway, I´m kind of lost in the discussion. I am aware of the uses and misuses of lipo cels but I don’t consider that using them in a flashlight or headlamp for trail running or for biking poses significant risks. Particularly, I am more concerned about breaking my neck biking downhill, if I don’t carry enough lumens. I do not particularly support any application that heats and cools the cells on purpose, and there is where I got lost… I only asked about the cheap safety bags for charging with more peace of mind if at some point I need to leave the charger unattended for a while 0:) .
The 3 amps is at the tailcap? This would probably equate to around 800mA at the led.
It appears to be this one here with a few extra modes.
Looks virtually identical including the markings LDCH on the back.
The only visual difference I can see compared to your macro shot is that this batch seems to have more turns of wire on the torriod.
3A+ is at the tailcap yes - I probably should have spelled that out. By way of comparison, I've not measured any of my other single AA lights drawing this much out of a single Eneloop. Efficiency unknown since I haven't tried to measure emitter current, but your guess of 800mA at the LED sounds about right and is in line with the posted specs.
Unlike the samples in your review, these ones don't suffer from next mode memory.
There are 3 groups of modes with every combination of levels and blinkies known to man to choose from. I mostly use Group 1 which consists of LL, Beacon, L, M, H, T.
I had to search "the other place" for instructions on how to switch between the groups though. 
Now I just need a decent (budget) single AA host to take a 17mm driver. (EDIT: Or try to find a local source for the 18650 sized NiMH that Hank linked to.)