It could literally be any thing?
The light, The batteries, The charger itself, Internal wiring, USB cable?
The smell you are describing sounds like a PCB melting, My soldering iron broke and i was doing some work didn’t notice the tip was at like 600 degrees Celsius and i melted a PCB. Worse smell ive ever the cheaper PCBs seems to smell worse than the better ones.
You really need to open that up and see what’s damaged for sure. You can’t put that in the mail and return it if it has damaged lithium batteries. You need to know. You really need to know. Heck, now we want to know 
Is a quick and fast way to upload pics from ur phone
Just post the link, no need to embed em in the post
It’s time to find some cheap plastic or latex gloves, go outside and open the light. Dump the batteries and check the positive ends. Look at the face of the driver. Describe and/or take pics of what looks ‘wrong’.
Never. do. that.
Never leave a li-ion charger operating unwatched.
Worst case, NOT applicable to your experience, but for caution to others:
WARNING: if a cell vents with flame, that reaction can produce hydrogen fluoride, which is what you’d want to immediately tell an emergency room doctor as
the health effects of exposure to HF may not show up for several days.
You mentioned : The smell was so strong that simply plugging my phone into the same charger for 5 minutes has made my phone charging port emit the smell to the point where I can smell it from 3 feet away.
Do you even suspect your charger than to the light?
Okay guys I am going to work on this. This thing is seriously inside of a plastic bag inside of a tupperware outside because even the plastic bag was not enough to get rid of the smell so I’m not looking forward to it but I guess you’re right. Without taking the pics I’m not giving you enough info. So if I had a severe headache all day yesterday but I feel much better today do you think I’m physically okay at this point? What would an emergency room even do about hydrogen fluoride? From my understanding when you’re exposed to stuff like this there isn’t a whole lot they actually do for you.
The entire light smelled like this. I was using a 7-foot USB cable that was probably 5 feet from the charger. The charger has no smell whatsoever. Just the tip of the cable. Whatever offgassed and filled the entire house with a smell was bigger than a USB c connector
Pic of the top of the bats (positive), the inside of the head (where the bat + connects to) and the usb port (flap open)
That should tells us what we need to know
Also the negative bat terminal and the springs if u can
A respirator might help
- do it outside
- If there’s airflow, hold he light downwind of you
After a few days, there should be very little gas / smoke left in the light, but safety is always a good habit.
Ziplock bags aren’t scent proof at all, so that’s not surprising. If you can afford to, I would play it safe and ask a doctor.
Pictures are coming shortly. Just a couple of very interesting updates. The first one is the light still turns on and functions. The second is the cells look to be intact, but there is clearly burning on the board on the bottom of the head that the positive terminals contact. And the third is the fact that the smell is still exceptionally strong that even with fans blowing outside it was difficult for my girlfriend and I to tolerate. I really can’t understate how strong this smell is.
Something defo went wrong there then, burn’t up alright - I’ve seen something like this before on here, now who was it?
If memory serves me correct, he went outside at night and it happened in his hand and there was smoke in the head. Was a different light though I think….
One of my SP36's threw a wobbly while charging and stank to high heaven of a chemical smell.
It was the charging circuit as far as I could tell.
The cells look okay right? Am I just dealing with a very smelly board? I’m assuming it’s the charging board in particular because the flashlight still functions, ramps everything
Just out of curiosity when a board burns up and start smoking and smelling what is actually in the air and what is the lingering smell? Is this essentially just burnt plastic, resin and solder and that kind of thing? I don’t really know what these are made of.
Sounds like exactly what happened to me. Did you have any physical symptoms? What did you do just throw the light away and throw the cable away?
Do you have a DMM to measure the cells?
Either way i wouldnt use that light, especially the charging
Amazon return
Put it on charge first time, bad stink came out of it, no smoke, still worked, but would not charge.
Stripped out userable bits and binned the rest.
Bought 2 more.