I’ve been using a nitecore d4 charger and it’s a pita because the prongs that touch the negative terminal of the batteries bend very easy when inserting the batteries. I have to pull them back as gentle as possible by hand and hope they don’t bend when closing onto the battery.
I’m wondering if this is common on all chargers or if it’s just the nitecores or nitecores d4?
Have a pleasant time at this friendly forum, c-Braun!
Welcome to BLF!
Your issue is an interesting one, I don’t think I’ve come across other occurances.
The negative contacts of all these battery chargers is usuall nickel coated steel, I think I’d struggle to bend any of my charger contacts, even deliberately!
Can’t say I’ve experienced newer nitecores, but my old (8years) nitecore D2 is fine, so perhaps yours is some kind of manufacturing default?
Interesting, it’s the only lion charger I’ve used so nothing else to compare it with. I’ve read others having the same issue with the d4 so I think it may be an over all design flaw.
What do you mean by the prongs bending? Like the metal is so thin that it flexes? Or that the structure that supports the prongs is bad?
I’m afraid I’ll have to use pliers to bend the prongs on my XTAR’s, Opus, or Vapcell. Are you sure your Nitecore charger is legit?
OTOH it wouldn’t hurt if you slide the prong a few times back and forth before you insert the battery.
It’s the metal itself where it 90 degree bends up from the base it can literally bend into a slight obtuse angle and no longer contact the negative terminal well enough to detect/charge the battery.
They’re really easy to bend back into place as well (with no battery inserted), very little effort required just push on it with medium pressure with my finger.
I believe it’s legit, it has worked well otherwise. I purchased it from a local vape shop maybe 10 years ago. It didn’t see much use until more recently when I began using 18650 lights.
To be sure I dug out my first charger, a Nitecore i4 to “investigate” the prongs on that one. Though I could bend them a bit more easy, they were more elastic than the others and resumed their original shape.
I had a D4 for over 10 years. The pins never bent and I charged 1000 batteries on it.
I’ve never bent the prongs on my D4 either. I did notice that the spring tension is noticeably less on my Xtars though and the prongs slide more easily which makes it nicer to use.
There were a bunch of fake Nitcore chargers being sold around 10 years ago. Enough that Nitecore had a page that discussed them.
Here is an old BLF thread that talked about the fake chargers.
Wow that’s interesting. I didn’t easily identify mine as fake or genuine based off the information but judging by the low quality steel chances are it is an imitation! Thank you to everyone for this info
I was just pushing on mine, one bent very easy as if it’s about to break 
. It could also be the spring tension is rather tight on mine and the sliding action hangs up where the metal slides on metal unsmoothly. Probably a fake now that I know there were some around back when I purchased. Thanks for checking