# SureFire M6 batteries exploded



## rkboyer911 (Feb 17, 2006)

Had my SF M6 in the truck (December in Missouri....COLD!!)
w/ SF batteries in it..got my light out to use it and it wouldnt turn on. opened it to put in new batteries and they had blown up in the melting my carrier  ......sent the light back to SF..thay have had it since Jan 27 and they still have not fixed it....so much for the 2 week turn around!!!!
They told me they have never had this happen I have talked to several ppl and this is happening ALOT!
Any thoughts?


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## cy (Feb 17, 2006)

got pictures?


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## beezaur (Feb 17, 2006)

Were all the batteries in the same state of charge? Mixing batts by brand or freshness can cause blowups. So can using "off" brands. Not sure I've ever heard of a SureFire light with SureFire batts having a failure like that, with batts all of the same freshness.

Maybe the cold caused some of the batts to act like they were dead?

How cold is "cold?"

Scott


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## rkboyer911 (Feb 17, 2006)

All the batteries were SF batteries....all new on istallation.....oh not hellifyed cold...um 20-35 degrees


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## Flash_Gordon (Feb 17, 2006)

rkboyer911 said:


> All the batteries were SF batteries....all new on istallation.....oh not hellifyed cold...um 20-35 degrees


Ouch! The cold should not have been a factor. CR123's spec is -40C for both storage and operation.

One of SF cells must have shorted on its own and started a chain reaction. Hope they replace your light soon. I don't expect they will even comment on the problem.


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## wquiles (Feb 17, 2006)

Sound kind of scary!

Never mind the M6 (which can be replaced) - glad that "you" are OK.

Will


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## cy (Feb 17, 2006)

got pictures???

this is your third post. I've never heard of a failure like this. yet you claim you hear it happens a lot??? 

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rkboyer911 said:


> Had my SF M6 in the truck (December in Missouri....COLD!!)
> w/ SF batteries in it..got my light out to use it and it wouldnt turn on. opened it to put in new batteries and they had blown up in the melting my carrier  ......sent the light back to SF..thay have had it since Jan 27 and they still have not fixed it....so much for the 2 week turn around!!!!
> They told me they have never had this happen I have talked to several ppl and this is happening ALOT!
> Any thoughts?


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## CLHC (Feb 18, 2006)

rkboyer911 said:


> . . .I have talked to several ppl and this is happening ALOT!


First time to hear/read about this. . .One-off[ers] I'm sure. It can take longer than (2) two weeks for you to get it back. My SureFire 10X took around six (6) weeks or so. Must suck not having the SF.M6 around though. . .

Enjoy!


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## HarryN (Feb 18, 2006)

The M6 pulls on the cells pretty hard - IMHO, almost at the design limit. Still, that is not something I have heard from other M6 users on this forum. I would have expected that to be discussed quite a bit here if it were "common". That is a pretty popular high end light.


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## seery (Feb 18, 2006)

rkboyer911 - Do you have any pics you could share with us?


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## rkboyer911 (Feb 18, 2006)

sorry didnt take any pics of it before I sent it off.....I say ive heard of this alot..due to my friend was one of the guys that was involved in the R&D of the nite ops Gladius......he also use to work for surefire.....He said this was a problem for several lots of batteries......unknown problem......but yes im ok and so it me brand new Duramax!! LOL


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## cy (Feb 18, 2006)

rkboyer911 said:


> sorry didnt take any pics of it before I sent it off.....I say ive heard of this alot..due to my friend was one of the guys that was involved in the R&D of the nite ops Gladius......he also use to work for surefire.....He said this was a problem for several lots of batteries......unknown problem......but yes im ok and so it me brand new Duramax!! LOL


Sorry if your claim that this happens a lot just doesnot pan out. there's a huge user base of Surefire M6 users on cpf and this failure mode has NEVER been mentioned before your second of third post. 

sure would be nice if you could offer some pics or other proof this has actually happened.


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## beezaur (Feb 18, 2006)

My read is that he is not making a claim that the M6 does this happens a lot. The claim is that a friend or friends said it happens a lot. Those are two different things. You can't expect a guy to prove the veracity of what a friend has said.

I would be curious to know how many SureFire M6s have been sold versus how many are owned by CPF users. I don't know, but suspect that M6 use by CPFers would be less severe, say, than by someone in the military. Another aspect is, of all the battery time that M6s have seen in use, how much of that is by CPF users?

What I am saying is that just because it hasn't come under the gaze of CPF readers, that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Nor does it mean that it isn't probable. We tend not to be hard users.

Personally I am not worried about a burst in an M6. There is 1) a lot of room inside for gas to expand in, and 2) a huge lens area for built-up pressure to push on before the body would burst. I would expect the lens to push out/fail before the cap blew off. I could be wrong, but that's the way it seems to me. In this case the light didn't burst.

Scott


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## Skyline (Feb 18, 2006)

I've got an M6 with SF123As sitting in my car for the past year, through 12F weather most recently. It hasn't been a problem so far. Maybe I should go and check sometime.


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## NewBie (Feb 18, 2006)

rkboyer911 said:


> Had my SF M6 in the truck (December in Missouri....COLD!!)
> w/ SF batteries in it..got my light out to use it and it wouldnt turn on. opened it to put in new batteries and they had blown up in the melting my carrier  ......sent the light back to SF..thay have had it since Jan 27 and they still have not fixed it....so much for the 2 week turn around!!!!
> They told me they have never had this happen I have talked to several ppl and this is happening ALOT!
> Any thoughts?




There was thread on a Pelican M6 that did this too.


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## CLHC (Feb 19, 2006)

Well, maybe that's a Pelican for you. . .Interesting photo.


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## rkboyer911 (Feb 19, 2006)

Not saying this is a M6 problem at all...I just found it funny that it all melted down......Im not saying anybody is at fault.


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## greenLED (Feb 20, 2006)

I don't think anybody's doubting that it hapenned to your light, rkboyer911. What we're trying to decipher is your reference to this hapenning "a lot" in the SF M6 - I don't recall a single report of this on CPF. Usually when something goes bad with a light (regardless of brand) we here about it again an again (case in hand, the recent issues with the SF U2 switch).



> I say ive heard of this alot..due to my friend was one of the guys that was involved in the R&D of the nite ops Gladius......he also use to work for surefire.....He said this was a problem for several lots of batteries......unknown problem.....



Is your friend actually talking about this hapenning in the M6, or talking about the batteries (independent of light being used in)? I'm trying to understand what you're referring to.  Exploding batteries is not an unknown problem (as NewBie pointed out), but I wouldn't say it happens "a lot" (which is different than saying "several lots" of deffective batteries).

In McGizmo style:


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## andrewwynn (Feb 20, 2006)

if it just did that w/o operation that is very shocking.. i'm actually surprised it *doesn't* happen in operation. 

When we did the M6 v M66 showdown.. the M6 just stopped operating at 11 minutes into the run.. apparently an internal overheat problem.. after about 1-2 minutes of sitting there i decided to measure the battery temp and it was STILL 180F.. 

When i did some math and figured out that the M6 generates about 22W of heat internal on the batteries.. and that when we build LED lights we are concerned about dumping 5 to 10W, in much bigger hosts, that really amazed me!

Another thing.. 'explode' is not even implicit.. it's explicitly saying that parts went flying at large percentages of the speed of sound.. did it explode or just catch fire and melt things? there is a very important difference. 

-awr


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## rkboyer911 (Feb 20, 2006)

Well I guess it didnt explode...it did get hot enough to melt the carrier and the batteries were in pieces inside the light.IE the covers on the batteries were off and the bad smell of acid was about. It also got hot enough to damage the bulb end. But I guess I should have taken pictures of this to show im not a moron and this did happen to me...Ill know now if this ever happens again!!  HOPE THE HELL NOT!! Nothing left the inside(shrapnel). No my buddy didnt say it was just in the M6 lights. He said they had several(thats the words he used) batteries come back to SF that had melted together/shorted out inside different lights. Now several to me is more than 2. So it might have been only 3 different times this happened I dont know.


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## SilverFox (Feb 20, 2006)

A point of clarification:

While most unusual, it has been observed and reported on CPF that the M6 battery holder can short out internally. 

This would produce results similar to what Rkboyer911 has observed with his light.

Tom


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## andrewwynn (Feb 20, 2006)

the battery pack is good for 50W+.. that will cause exactly the kind of damage described, no doubt... glad to see that it was more of an extreme meltdown and nothing got 'violent' ala explosion.. hope you get your new light soon.. i would personally look into a rechargeable solution asap and lose the primary cells.. running primary cells at 55% efficiency generates extreme heat (22W worth) inside the cells.. just sounds like bad practice to me. 

-awr


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## greenLED (Feb 20, 2006)

Thanks for clarifying, rkboyer911 and SilverFox.


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## NewBie (Jun 25, 2006)

rkboyer911 said:


> Well I guess it didnt explode...it did get hot enough to melt the carrier and the batteries were in pieces inside the light.IE the covers on the batteries were off and the bad smell of acid was about. It also got hot enough to damage the bulb end. But I guess I should have taken pictures of this to show im not a moron and this did happen to me...Ill know now if this ever happens again!!  HOPE THE HELL NOT!! Nothing left the inside(shrapnel). No my buddy didnt say it was just in the M6 lights. He said they had several(thats the words he used) batteries come back to SF that had melted together/shorted out inside different lights. Now several to me is more than 2. So it might have been only 3 different times this happened I dont know.



If this happens with any lithium cell, in the future, I'd suggest handling things with gloves, and take care not to whiff too much of the smell. Both can be dangerous.

If you are exposed, please see a doctor, some cpf'ers have had nasty reactions.


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## NewBie (Jul 7, 2006)

SilverFox said:


> A point of clarification:
> 
> While most unusual, it has been observed and reported on CPF that the M6 battery holder can short out internally.
> 
> ...




Tom,

If you haven't been following it, I'd invite you to catch up with what we know, around post 647:
http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1492092#post1492092


Teaser shot on some of the testing that has been going on:


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## SilverFox (Jul 8, 2006)

Hello Newbie,

Thanks. I have been closely following that thread. I just have not had a lot to say...

Tom


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## snakebite (Jul 8, 2006)

iirc that light is a series paralel setup.
i can see a dud cell in one string causing the remaining good ones in the same series to get overcharged by the other strings.poof!


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## cy (Jul 8, 2006)

seeing this post reserected, dates when primary lithium cell failures first started to trickled in. 

reading my own and other's simular responses of rarity of hearing feedback concerning. primary lithium cell failures in Surefire M6. 

Newbie, has repeatable venting failures occurred in any other brand cells besides Battery Station brand? 

high probabiity this same Chinese private label battery mfg is producing huge numbers of primary lithium cells for a host of other brands. 

further... once produced products gets into the distribution pipeline. it's going to be sold one way or another. 

best example of this is a certain Chinese li-ion charger that self-destroyed, causing a fire. there are several threads covering this topic. This exact same brand charger keeps apearing on ebay and other sales venues. 

Could we find out who actual failed battery mfgs identity's are for all the known failures? And all mfg dates of known primary lithium battery failures?

this possibly would put a date and face on these primary lithium battery failures....




NewBie said:


> Teaser shot on some of the testing that has been going on:


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## sdavis (Aug 19, 2006)

ad a similar experience in my M6 today. Went to pre-op the M6 and found it out of power. Removed the battery magazine (original batts shipped with the M6) and found batts had ruptured. Removed and cleaned the carrier and flashlight and replaced with new Surefire batts. Immediately noticed the magazine and batts were heating up. Pulled all batts to make sure I did not incorrectly load the magazine. Reloaded the magazine making sure of polarity. Did an initial check and did not notice any significant heat (magazine was still warm from previous overheat). Placed the carrier on a desk to do a quick task before rechecking the magazine. With in few minutes, one of the batteries vented. 

 

Based on the number of batteries (all at room temp) this has to be an issue with the magazine. In addition, the magazine functioned properly upon delivery but failed sometime after that. M6 in question was a back-up and had been on the shelf in a very stable environment.


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## Safety1st (Aug 19, 2006)

The same thing happened with a 6P of mine....Blew the batteries..and 'smoked' the lens..

On the subject of a M6...

I'm thinking of getting one for LEO use...

Should I be encouraged or disuaded ?


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## bwaites (Aug 19, 2006)

Safety 1st,

There are 2 lights that every LEO should consider as far as I am concerned.

I'm not sure what your LEO guidelines are or if you carry pepper spray, but the first is the Tigerlight. I do not understand why every LEO who works nights and carrys a full sized light doesn't carry one. Having your spray AND your light in the same hand is an incredible force multiplier.

The other is the Suefire M6. Running the LOLA for everday use and the HOLA when necessary, or just running the HOLA with an extra pack readily available makes the M6 a "No Brainer" in my book.

BUT...pound for pound, dollar for dollar, the Tigerlight kicks every other rechargeables butt!!!

Bill


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## cy (Aug 19, 2006)

thanks for sharing...

not much doublt, your M6 battery carrier has an internal dead short. 

so far no twisty (lotc) light has a documented failure without an internal dead short. 



sdavis said:


> ad a similar experience in my M6 today. Went to pre-op the M6 and found it out of power. Removed the battery magazine (original batts shipped with the M6) and found batts had ruptured. Removed and cleaned the carrier and flashlight and replaced with new Surefire batts. Immediately noticed the magazine and batts were heating up. Pulled all batts to make sure I did not incorrectly load the magazine. Reloaded the magazine making sure of polarity. Did an initial check and did not notice any significant heat (magazine was still warm from previous overheat). Placed the carrier on a desk to do a quick task before rechecking the magazine. With in few minutes, one of the batteries vented.
> 
> 
> 
> Based on the number of batteries (all at room temp) this has to be an issue with the magazine. In addition, the magazine functioned properly upon delivery but failed sometime after that. M6 in question was a back-up and had been on the shelf in a very stable environment.


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## NewBie (Aug 20, 2006)

Safety1st said:


> The same thing happened with a 6P of mine....Blew the batteries..and 'smoked' the lens..
> 
> On the subject of a M6...
> 
> ...




The shorted carrier for the M6 has happened a few times before. It is interesting to hear that the PTC devices in the cells didn't kick in, in the Surefire cells, which is what the PTC should protect against.


This is Quickbeam's take on the deal:

Some of it is due to marketers' fear-mongering in order to sell products that don't use 123A cells and instead use alkalines as a "safe alternative".

Could it happen to me? 

Yes, it could happen. 

You could also get struck by lightning next time you walk outside. 

A meteor could come crashing though your house. 

Your computer monitor could burst into flames right now.

None of those things happening are very likely, are they?

Yes, I'm trying to make a point.

http://flashlightreviews.com/features/123burst.htm



Lets reality check what has been going on:
http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=124776&page=1&pp=40


Though in your case, if this is really yet another case of the M6 battery carrier shorting again, it is somewhat troublesome. Batteries really shouldn't have to protect themselves against shoddy flashlight quality/design.


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## AllenInks (Aug 23, 2006)

Well, I just found this forum by searching for "Pelican M6 battery explode", because that is just what happened to me. I replaced the batteries in my flashlight about 10 days ago...with new RadioShack batteries. Used it intermittently a couple of times. Then, tonight, while looking for our assigned campsite at the RV park we were in, turned on my M6, but it only was on for a couple of seconds. Fiddled with it a bit, screwing the base all the way in ( to ON) but it wouldn't come on. Had to pay attention to driving RV, so my buddy got out his flashlight, and I put mine aside. About 15 - 20 minutes later (long enough unhook the towed automobile, park the RV, level the motorhome, put out the slide outs, hook up the electricity, water, and sewer, then come in and begin to relax) there were two VERY LOUD pops - like firecrackers, spaced a couple of seconds apart. They came from the direction of the driver's panel, and I could smell "electrical equipment burned smell". I had left my flashlight in the cup holder next to the drivers seat, so I went to pick it up to see if I could get it to work, and look under the panel - THEN DROPPED IT LIKE THE HOT POTATO IT WAS! Damned hot! Grabbed a rag, and threw the flashlight out the door. Used the rag to pull the batteries out of the flashlight, and put all of this on rocks...so it wouldn't start grass on fire. But...it's 3 AM, so I didn't do a detailed inspection of the flashlight yet. My ears didn't stop ringing for 20 minutes. 

I have no idea if there will be problems trying to get this fixed, but it's good to know that I'm not the only one this has happened to.


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## cy (Aug 23, 2006)

alleninks, welcome to cpf, sure glad you came out ok from your lithium failure. 

this is the first report of a radio shak cell failing, but for some reason. multiple reports of pelican M6 failures posted on cpf. several lengthy failure threads posted


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## Chronos (Aug 23, 2006)

AllenInks,

I had a venting occur in a rental car several weeks ago. Check out NewBie's thread covering his ongoing 123 tests. I've got a long thread running in this forum- NewBie and others posted quite a few helpful links on the toxins that are present in this type of event. Please make sure you "air out" the cabin of your vehicle and I wouldn't touch the light without gloves. 

Is it time to post a "sticky" in the forum outlining a "what to do..." in case of primary cell venting? Would this be helpful?


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