Thinking badly, a laptop would be a bomb if someone had the intention to do something bad with it…
Yeah? I’m tempted but I don’t want them to ban lion cells. I think next time I will find a better way. Speaking of which do any of you guys with lathes think it would be possible to machine a tail cap for a dry out of delrin or some other non cunductive material.
Shouldn’t be a problem, I’d probably machine a plain cap with a couple of thumb screws if I couldn’t match the threads, or how about a thin delrin disk that you drop inside the tail cap?
How much for something like that?
Ah, money, that’s embarrassing, don’t know to be honest. You’d need to know the size of the tail cap, and decide if a whole tail cap or an isolation disk is best. Plus I’m in the UK. Shipping would be a couple of dollars. I think the neatest solution would be a 2mm thick sliver of delrin 5mm smaller than the I’d of the current tail cap, providing there’s enough give in the spring. I’ve never had my hands on a dry so I don’t know, but a thin disk would be fairly easy to part off a delrin rod, someone in the states must have a suitable piece?
That’s fine. I’ll probably try to find a local machinist.
Let us know if your still stuck, I’ll see what I can do, but I’m sure someone in the states could sort it, there might even be something available off the shelf that would do the job, knowing the size would help, but even a piece of rubber between the spring and contact disk on the battery holder would do the job :bigsmile:
you know the more I think about this event the more I think we should all realize how safe “most” of our flashlights and batteries are…I mean scaru’s Dry being on high in a suitcase and no explosion or venting or anything really tells the tale that these li-ions and lights are generally pretty safe…this is a 3 cell light in series which is supposed to be the most dangerous set-up and nothing happens? his one battery is at 0v and by all accounts should have have set-off a chain event of cell dumping carnage and nothing happens? the few failures that we know about vs how many lights we use are pretty minor really…cars burn down all the time and we still drive without really worrying about it…anyway just my .02$ about this event…
Im currently trying to figure out something not so obvious. I’m wondering whether some sort of PVC cap would work. Right now I don’t have access to any tools do the project is on hold for 2 weeks till I get home.
Try cutting a disk, (or several), from a poly milk carton. As long as it’s near the size of the battery tube it should stay in place.
You might need a note to the baggage people to make sure that it is in place before returning it to your luggage though 
After this I don’t trust a simple spacer I want to make it so it so it is missing a needed part to operate. I think the best thing would be a delri tail cap or a tail cap with a key required to operate it.
Is the pill removable? If so, take that out and carry in your hand luggage with the light and cells in your case?
No sense complicating things. Just pick up a floor tile (plastic) or something similar and cut a small round piece of it. The hardware store also has many nonconductive alternatives to use instead. If it has a good selection of rubber washers there will probably be several “solid” sizes that are made so you can make your own hole (you dont want a hole in this case). An automotive firewall gasket comes to mind. Tons of choices, just make one. Yep, you can buy a delrin rod and cut the thickness you want but why bother. Make it easy and cheap on yourself.
What idiots, basically they activated a pipe bomb in your suitcase. They have no business going through your stuff anyway. God that makes me mad…
How about cutting a disc from one of those coloured cutting board mats you buy in packs of four for kitchen use? They are only a few bucks a set, and you can cut up one and use the others in the kitchen
my lights have reverse polarity protection. loading batteries in the wrong direction helps. light cant turn on!
Me too! With this spate of flashlight bbs going off the guy must be a real IDIOT to activate a flashlight found in a suitcase! SHEESSH! They have other means (hi-tech) of detecting explves without pilfering through stuff! I can see it now. Idiot agent= Hey, a potential flashlight b*b, I think I”LL activate it and see if it work”s ( I”ll get on the news. be a hero).
Keith (who would crawl before boarding a stinking plane)
Something similar happened to me and when I asked about it, TSA said they wanted to make sure it worked so it was what it appeared to be. Apparently they don’t grasp that explosives can be hidden in a working light, radio or whatever. The reason I bring this up is because no matter what you do, TSA rocket scientists might circumvent it to “prove” it’s not a bomb.
scaru -
Was there a smell? Did the flashlight vent and, therefore get real hot with no ignition? What brand-name cells were they? You say they "had a capacity within 20 mAh of each other." Do you mean the three cells in the light each had a different rated capacity? Please tell me you didn't mix different brands/age cells in a series light.
You probably didn't I'm sure but the "capacity within 20mAh of each other" sounds like at least one of the batteries was a different brand or it was older/newer than the others. Very bad idea.
I apologize if I misunderstood you. (probably did)
Foy
The point also is, that if the thing went off BECAUSE some imbecile had to get his claws on it, the OP would have been locked away to Guantanamo. Think of it like that.
Yes, if you don’t treat unprotected Lithium batteries right (leaving a DRY on in a suitcase for god knows how long), they can explode. Now we all know or at least should know this danger but we are protected by knowledge. Somebody in the TSA likes to play with toys, fine, just get your hands off our lights or we are going the ones getting in trouble for no sane reason.
If you leave a knife in a suitcase and a TSA guy takes it out and cuts stabs himself nobody would give a sh*t about the knife but hey, if a flashlight operates in an undesired way (exploding because the battery has been mistreated) there’s going to be a flashlight ban sooner then you might think because it’s not like the government is a group of intelligent people who make their laws because of logic. Simple as that.
Can’t stop thinking about the incident since I read it. It’s ridiculous that we have to deal with such crap, having a legitimate hobby.