I will most definitely admit to doing that, but if I would have said to the wife “no dear, I can’t spend some quick time with you before you leave for work, I have to keep an eye on my charger”. The flashlight hobby would’ve went out the window. LOL 
That's when you stop charging (or use a safe charger). I'm still really interested to get these cells and do some testing because I seriously doubt that they went up to 4.5 volts.
I didn’t know at the time my charger was unsafe, it is in safe working order now. I assure you it went to 4.5V, because I was thanking my lucky stars that it didn’t go poof.
What was wrong with it?
The whole explanation is here.
But long story short, balance was set to on and the charger didn’t seem to know what to do.
I dont doubt that. Its possible to charge a cell to 4.5V imo. Not recommended obviously. ;)
Still, I see the fault as being mostly on the user and partially on Bob for sending wrong cells. But honestly, I would expect someone with a hobby charger and 26650s to know what they are doing..
Although 4.5V is weird for any LiIon setting. Maybe you had set series charging for 3 NiMH cells?
Do we know that Bob sent the wrong cells? So far I see no proof of that.
Well as I stated before, they looked nothing like this one.
I never saw the need to take pictures of them.
Golden, no dent and the magnet attached perfectly. Sounds unprotected to me. And sounds more realistic than a defective circuit by Keeppower.
Exactly. Can you take and post pictures of the cells you received from KumaBear, particularly the negative end? I have protected 26650 cells with a metal cap on the end, so just stating that it’s metal on the end is not enough to know for sure.
Scaru, if you get one, you may have to open up the end to see what is in there.
I would strongly suggest you get a li-on only 26650 compatible charger, and do some serious research on your hobby charger before using it.
As I said above, I have one, but have not as of yet used it for charging flashlight cells - I just don’t trust myself not to make a cock up, and have not properly read up on its use.
As Chicago-x says, you pretty much say you were relying on the protection circuit, its not there for that, its not there to excuse user error/abuse. It’s there as a just un-case back up.
I won’t recommend a charger, as the one I have, bought from a trusted blf member, people report issues, I have not yet had any such issues, but I won’t be responsible for a potentially bad recommendation. There are reviews on a few 26650 chargers, have a read and pick one up. For your own, and our peace of mind. The last thing any of us want to hear, despite how harsh we all sound is of you having an accident.
I hope you can take this as friendly concerned advice, rather than the shouting it looks like in text, in person, I’d hope we could be having this discussion over a beer and leave as friends. 
:bigsmile:
I believe that the fact he got "Battery Disconnected" with trustfires, but not with these batteries does tell the story: These batteries are not protected.
I do not really believe that these batteries uses a chip with only under voltage protection and over current protection.
I will note that I have one protection board from a mobile phone battery that did not have an overcharge cutoff (I removed it from the cell and tested it to 4.6V). It did have SC and overdischarge protection. I can understand its use on a dedicated use cell (it only gets charged on the phone).
I would not expect a general purpose cell to have this type of protection chip, but they do exist and therefore it is possible they are in use on some protection PCBs.
Of the protected cells I’ve tested (TR 16340, TR14500, and UF 26650), all have had OC, OD, and SC protection.
I would really like to see actual tests done on the protection PCB that is in those cells, to understand the real ‘protection’ being offered.
Just for the record. I have protected 18650 batteries where a little neodymium magnet sticks to the protection circuit pretty well. Instead of all of us bashing on what happened here, we should all be looking at this as a learning experience. The culpability issues here could be a little from both sides. The positives here is that no one got hurt. Bob did the honorable thing and refunded the buyer. We need to get to the bottom of what happened and investigate, so it does not happen again and be sure that no one ever gets hurt. We are all members here who have a insatiable liking of flashlights and everything relating to them.
Let’s turn this into a positive result. Come on guys.
I’ve only used the hobby charger for charge/discharge cycles. Luckily my brother(where the charger came from) has been using the exact charger frequently for quite some time if I need help with it(he’s an RC guy).
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I can see that it looks like I was relying on it, but it was unintentional.
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I started with a WF-139 which I didn’t trust. I went to an i4 and I also have 2 Miller ML-102s and an i2 on the way.
Thanks for the kind words. Cheers to making new friends. 
Me too, but my test station have been to busy for me to reprogram them.
Yes, they do exist, I am going to post a review of one later today.
That Ninja Guy, can you post pictures? If you email them to me at scarudabest@gmail.com I will post them for you.
It never crossed my mind to take pictures of the cells…
Did you send them back to Bob?
Yes, he already received them and I got a refund.