Is it OK to do that? I just did it! Got some new Solarforce 880mAh 16340s and they don’t fit in my Olight S10 so I peeled one down to the metal, removing the PCB and leaving the white ring around the + terminal. Now it fits and works in the light but I’m not going to use it full time ’til you guys tell me I’m not setting up some doomsday scenario. Thanks!
What were you thinking? Well, some day. Probably not from using an unprotected li-ion unless you’re just really really careless. Might not be a bad idea to re-wrap it though. Get some shrink wrap and put the wrap back on it. 
Should have said…“Am I gonna speed up my inevitable demise?!!” :party:
But really, what does the covering do? The whole body of the light is ground, right? I’ve heard it’s dangerous to run a non-covered battery…why?
Thanks Dale.
The possibility of shortying it out is much higher, and you stand a chance of it welding itself into a short which would indeed be bad. So the wrap is a safety net. With the protection circuit and it’s wire removed, I guess it’s not really a big issue.
Possibly an issue of the steel case (or whatever metal is used on a li-ion case) causing a reaction with the aluminum and making a hole in the case of your cell, another bad scenario but don’t know if that could actually happen or not.
I bout got killed a half hour ago so am on meds and may not be making a lot of sense. Get another opinion for security purposes! lol
(allergic to yellow jackets, got stung in the shoulder, waaay too close to the neck, about 40 of the buggers were on a double fist sized nest about 10 inches from my head! It’s truly a wonder I only got stung once!)
Oh man, now THAT sounds dangerous! 
Take care of yourself!!
LOL
Yup, it’s a good idea to cover it up with tape, if not shrink wrap.
Touch the top with a metal object, and you risk shorting out the battery, along with losing your light/hand/life. 
As long as you don’t short out the battery it’s not a big deal. But if you make a contact between the positive top and the negative sides you will. The plastic just makes that less likely to happen. It’s harder to short the top all the way to the bottom than it is to short the top to the side. Also keep in mind that these don’t have a lot of capacity and they are easy to over discharge. Even if you don’t completely drain them so that they can still be re-charged you can still damage them pretty easy. What happens is that crystals build up inside the battery and this makes them unstable and dangerous to re-charge one or two over discharges is not a big deal but if you do it over and over you might be damaging the battery to the point where it becomes unstable and dangerous.
You mean, touch the top with a metal object that’s also touching the side of the uncovered battery, right ryansoh3?
Yup. Also keep in mind that the top ring/diameter of the cell is also negative.
The positive tip and the negative ring are rather close, so it’s very easy to short them out, as they’re on the same plane.
Exactly.
That’s why I left the white ring on top, I can see that happening on the same plane.
Is this a real possibility?
I think you should definitely cover it up again with something. There’s just too many hazardous possibilities with uncovered battery, and really no good reason for not doing it.
If heat shrink is out of the question, even a regular tape is better than nothing.
The answer is: Yes, you are going to die.
Very probably not from a battery though.
I really wouldn’t ever use a battery without rewrapping it.
Without the strip up the side from the protection circuit it should be a bit thinner if you rewrap it.
There is a reason you never seen bare li-ions.
Shrink wrap is certainly cheap enough to at least try it. $0.84 blue $1.18 clear
Yep better safe than sorry. I’m in the process of shrink wrapping a bunch of 18650 2600mAh Samsungs right now that are great cells but for whatever reason the plastic they use is terrible and ripped up when they were removed from their battery packs. (not by me I bought them this way) I could use them with the exposed metal on the sides but I don’t see the point in taking the chance when the shrink wrap stuff is cheap and easy to use.
I would just tape them if it was me rather than buying wrap for a couple of cells.
Damn. How allergic are you? You have a epi-pen? Get a script for one if not.
We are all just walking dead waiting to stop walking. Probably none of us will die of an exploding battery and worse yet is that if one of us does, the rest of us probably will not get to see the video
Cover that derned battery.
I’ll be ordering some wrap from FT…but I can’t find the right size for 16340. Just one thickness of electrical tape makes it too big to fit in the S-10 so it may not work, but I’ll try!