18650 Batteries—Did I blow it? Halp!

All right, get your face palmin' hand ready, this is a noob post. Here we go...

So, I've got a couple of old Lezyne bike lights from around 2012. Great lights in general, but the USB charging circuit stopped working on one of them a few years back. No problem, since the other one worked, and since these use removable 18650 batteries, I could use the other one as a battery charger! But now, the USB charging circuit on the other one is kaput too, so now I need an external Li-Ion charger to keep using these lights. I bought one (Opus C3400, although I'm considering returning it for something else, since the first one I got was defective and wouldn't stay turned on for more than a few seconds, and the replacement has a fan that's making some seriously strange noises, and I'm getting pretty disillusioned about its build quality). So I used it to charge up my primary bike light, and while I was at it, I figured I'd charge up the secondary one as well. Unfortunately, the secondary light had been sitting on the shelf for a few years, and the charger wasn't recognizing the battery as being present when I inserted it. So I Googled a bit, found the "paper-clip trick", connected the positive and negative terminals of the good battery and the dead one for a while, popped the dead battery in the charger, and sure enough, it started charging!

Then, my fumble-fingers dropped the good battery, which fell from about waist-height onto a hard-wood floor with a loud "thud."

Finally, of course, I found the Li-Ion safety thread on this forum, and now I'm scared to use these batteries anymore.

Questions:

1. Is there any way to tell whether the battery that may have been discharged too far is safe to use, or should I recycle it to be safe?

2. Is there any way to tell whether the battery that got dropped on the floor is safe to use, or should I recycle it to be safe?

3. In the case that the answer to both questions is "toss 'em", where would you recommend getting a new pair of 18650 batteries? The specs on the originals are: Protected 18650, 3.7V, 2400 mAh. Unfortunately, when I search the usual sites (Amazon, etc.), I can't seem to find any name-brand batteries in the 2400 mAh capacity; every time I search for a Panasonic or similar brand, I seem to find batteries in the 3400-3500 range, and when I search for 2400 mAh, I just seem to find the .*Fire brands, and fires are what I specifically don't want. The safety thread cautions against using 3000+ mAh batteries in devices that ask for less, but those posts are from 2009. Is this still the case, or has the technology progressed to the point where I can just pick up some Panasonic 3400 mAh cells, put them in my light, and they'll work and probably get me a little longer runtime than I had before? Or am I playing with fire if I do that?

Thanks for any help you can provide!

1. No definitive way to check. A good indication could be to check the voltage before charging up, just to get some idea. One challenge with protected batteries is that it can be hard to measure the "real" voltage of the cell, since the protection circuit could be locking you out. Personally I'd recycle this cell. Even when treated well, LiIons do have a limited lifespan, and it seems these have had some years as it is.

2. Nothing definitive, but combination of low weight and relatively cold casings mean they can take a lot. If there's no physical marks, i wouldn't worry too much about a fall from waist high.

3. Looking at mAh alone, there's absolutely no harm in having a higher mAh-rated capacity. The trouble comes from the trade off between capacity in mAh, and how fast you can use that capacity, if the battery is high drain or not. There are no 30A-capable 2400mAh cells for example. These days though, that pretty much only matters for vapers and other specialized high drain application. Unless your light is pretty extreme in the current department, a modern 3400 or 3500 mAh would be fine.

Look for Orbtronic protected batteries, in that mAh-range. They've got a good reputation, and it should be possible to find them at decent prices.

Thanks for replying!

Yeah, checking the voltage is not an option now, because my dumb *** charged it all the way up and there's no way to know what its voltage was before I did that. It does seem to work all right, and according to the Opus, it actually managed to put more than its rated capacity into it (it's rated 2400 mAh, and got charged to something like 2550 if I remember right), which seemed rather impressive given its age and what it's been through. But yeah, I don't want to start any fires. Probably recycle it is. Thanks.

Looking at the one that got dropped, there is a tiny nick in what looks like the plastic coating, near the positive terminal. That might have been caused by the light itself, though, since the negative terminal on the light rubs against the battery on the way in and out due to the way it's designed.

Question about high-drain batteries, which I see a lot of when searching. Is there any way to tell whether my old batteries are high-drain or not? If they are not, do I need to avoid getting a high-drain battery to replace them, or does the high-drain feature kick in only if the device requests it, causing the batteries to act like normal low-drain batteries otherwise?

Another question I had is about AW batteries; I find a lot of recommendations for these in older posts on this forum, but those posts mentioned that the way to get non-fake ones was to buy them on CPF's marketplace, which doesn't seem to be a thing anymore AFAICT, and the only other places I can find to buy AW batteries generally tend to be sketchy-looking sites... are these still a thing, or has the world more or less moved on with Orbtronics being the new safe buy? I am more concerned about safety than about performance.

Thanks!

Re: 18650 Batteries—Did I blow it? Halp!

Vegaslights said:

What counts with these lights is the battery voltage, not the mAh capacity of the battery. Voltage is determined by battery chemistry so your Panasonic battery will work just as well as what was in the light to begin with. Yes, it will run longer.

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Sweet, thanks.

I thought the Lezyne lights used a proprietary battery pack so you couldn't simply use a standard 18650 battery in them unless you disassembled the battery pack and soldered in a new battery. It is one of my major reasons for not buying Lezyne products. Besides being expensive they don't reveal anything about the size of the battery in their lights. That's important to know to make an informed decision about which light to buy.

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They do now, but my lights are a few years old. For the first few years, Lezyne's lights used these:

https://magshop.lezyne.com/lithium-ion-rechargeable-battery-lir18650.html/

At the time I got mine, they were one of the only manufacturers that I could find that made compact one-piece (read: not with an unwieldy external power pack) bike lights with non-proprietary batteries in my price range. It was a big selling point in all their marketing materials and everything—one of my lights has "Infinite Light" stamped on the back on it to reference the fact that you could keep it running forever without stopping to charge if you had enough spare batteries to swap into it. Then at some point, they suddenly just stopped and switched to the integrated ones that you can't replace. :shrug:

Anyway yeah, if I were buying a brand new bike light today, I'd probably go for some other manufacturer since their USB charging ports are, in my experience, problematic, and there's no workaround anymore. Still love my old lights though—they really are solid high-quality lights, other than the stupid charging circuit.

I don't think a small nick in the battery case is anything to worry about. They aren't that fragile. I've dropped these cells while camping and has no problem. I even picked up one in the street that had been run over by a car just to see how much damage had been done. It was squashed and not usable but it did not catch fire or leak any chemicals.

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Whew, good to know. Still think I'll get a new one to replace the one that over-discharged, since I do like to have two of these on hand in case a friend wants to go riding and doesn't have his or her own light (and also to have a spare in case I do something stupid and screw up one of my batteries again).

I wouldn't worry about using regular Li-ion batteries versus the high-drain batteries. If you were building a battery pack for a tool like a drill or circular saw, then you would need high-drain batteries.

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Okay, so high and low-drain batteries will both perform equally well in my lights, right? Should I care about IMR, INR, etc.?

Here's the one I'm looking at; do you think it's a good choice? https://www.orbtronic.com/18650-protected-battery-3500mah-lithium-ion

Thanks!

CharlesJS said:

Sweet, thanks.


They do now, but my lights are a few years old. For the first few years, Lezyne's lights used these:

https://magshop.lezyne.com/lithium-ion-rechargeable-battery-lir18650.html/

At the time I got mine, they were one of the only manufacturers that I could find that made compact one-piece (read: not with an unwieldy external power pack) bike lights with non-proprietary batteries in my price range. It was a big selling point in all their marketing materials and everything—one of my lights has "Infinite Light" stamped on the back on it to reference the fact that you could keep it running forever without stopping to charge if you had enough spare batteries to swap into it. Then at some point, they suddenly just stopped and switched to the integrated ones that you can't replace. :shrug:

Anyway yeah, if I were buying a brand new bike light today, I'd probably go for some other manufacturer since their USB charging ports are, in my experience, problematic, and there's no workaround anymore. Still love my old lights though—they really are solid high-quality lights, other than the stupid charging circuit.

Whew, good to know. Still think I'll get a new one to replace the one that over-discharged, since I do like to have two of these on hand in case a friend wants to go riding and doesn't have his or her own light (and also to have a spare in case I do something stupid and screw up one of my batteries again).


Okay, so high and low-drain batteries will both perform equally well in my lights, right? Should I care about IMR, INR, etc.?

Here's the one I'm looking at; do you think it's a good choice? https://www.orbtronic.com/18650-protected-battery-3500mah-lithium-ion

Thanks!

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That Orbtronic cell is probably a re-wrapped Panasonic 18650GA protected cell, which is a high quality cell. The low-voltage protection circuit is put on by the distributor - you have to accept that at a certain voltage, the cell will cut power to whatever it is supplying power to in order to prevent the voltage of the cell from getting low enough to damage the cell. A protected cell is longer, in most cases, than an un-protected cell, so you need to make sure the protected cell is not too long to fit into the battery compartment.

Just stopping by to second that it's good battery.

If you're worried about the length, just buy a few to confirm that they'll work. There are plenty of other lights that they'd work well in fin they're too long for this light.

Ordered one to try it out. Since you guys think the one that was dropped should still be safe, I'll keep that one for my spare light, and try to remember to charge it every so often to avoid a repeat of this episode. Thanks!

Re: Orbtronics are Panasonic

Vegaslights said:

The Orbtronic website https://www.orbtronic.com/ actually states that their batteries are made by Panasonic. They add a Sanyo protection circuit.3500mAh Protected 18650 Battery Li-ion 3.7V Rechargeable Orbtronic 10A Dual Protection (Panasonic-Sanyo inside), For High Performance Flashlights, Case Included

$12.99.

I just bought two pairs of Panasonic 3400 mAh batteries from an eBay seller "genuinecells" who has been mentioned elsewhere in this forum. A pair cost $11.48 with free shipping. My initial test on a double CREE XPE bike light was that the Panasonic cells had a run times from 4 to 6 times what I got with the inexpensive Trustfire batteries. That's the point where the low-battery indicator on the light first began to flash.

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From what I've read, a lot of the eBay batteries are fake and not actually from the manufacturers that they claim to be from. For that reason, and particularly since I don't have the knowledge to tell a good battery from a bad one, I didn't really want to go the eBay route.

EDIT: Looking at the eBay genuinecells $11.48 batteries, it appears these are unprotected. Sorry, I need my fingers—can't afford to risk blowing them off. (Also, my understanding is that unprotected cells are shorter, so I don't know if they'd even reach all the way to the other terminal in my lights).

I try to stick with the less expensive lights. There are just too many good bike lights coming from China these days to bother with a light where they stick in a 18650 battery but don't let you replace it or put it in a proprietary case and then charge you many times the cost of buying one of the good Panasonic batteries. The Lezyne battery at $20 a pop (2400 mAh) is no bargain either. Forty bucks for two versus $11.50 for the Panasonic 3400 mAh batteries?

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The Lezyne $20 light is from a few years ago, though. You'll notice that it says "Out of Stock"—they probably discontinued that battery at about the time they stopped using replaceable 18650s. My old Lezynes do use replaceable 18650s, though, so I should be use any 18650 that fits. That's why I made this thread

Re: Orbtronics are Panasonic

Vegaslights said:

There are just too many good bike lights coming from China these days

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I'm looking to update my current and years old bike setup (based on MC-E & XM-L v2). Can you a name a few of those good lights?

Re: Orbtronics are Panasonic

fneuf said:

I'm looking to update my current and years old bike setup (based on MC-E & XM-L v2). Can you a name a few of those good lights?

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If I were buying a brand new light today, this is the one I'd probably get:

https://www.bikelightdatabase.com/fenix/bc21r/

Just look at that beam pattern, it's great. Looks like it lights the hell out of the road without blinding everyone coming the other way. Plus it has some lights on the side to increase your visibility from multiple angles.

This one looks pretty neat too; it's cheap and comes with a spare battery to boot:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GGR0XD0/?tag=cpf0b6-20

Re: Orbtronics are Panasonic

I agree BC21 or 30 from Fenix are great. But I fear they are one purposed, and I think that's a pretty stiff budget for one purposed light.
My current setup is custom, based on UltraFire C2 bodies. I've taken them biking, hiking, walking, downearth, across the globe, etc. I'm not sure the Fenix could be practical in other field than bike. Am I right?

Re: Orbtronics are Panasonic

fneuf said:

I agree BC21 or 30 from Fenix are great. But I fear they are one purposed, and I think that's a pretty stiff budget for one purposed light.
My current setup is custom, based on UltraFire C2 bodies. I've taken them biking, hiking, walking, downearth, across the globe, etc. I'm not sure the Fenix could be practical in other field than bike. Am I right?

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Dunno about the Fenix, because my experience ends with lights that are a few years old, and as such may not be up-to-date. But with all the bike lights I've owned, it's been the case that you're generally discouraged from using them as hand-held flashlights, because they're designed with the expectation in mind that they'll be used on a moving object, and thus running into continuous airflow which is factored into the cooling calculations. So if you use it stationary as a flashlight all the time, you risk overheating it.

Actually ordered a pair of Fenix BC21R myself today. I also found that some of the Chinese vendors has a pretty wide selection of mounts and attachments for mounting regular flashlights to bikes. Seems like a potentially interesting route to go.
Most likely, we're going the route of having both the BC21R as a dedicated, and also mounting Zebralights if we can find a mount that I'm happy with. The Zebras would then be proper dual function lights for us.

CharlesJS said:

[...] Looking at the one that got dropped, there is a tiny nick in what looks like the plastic coating, near the positive terminal. [...]

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Whenever the wrapper is damaged one should assess how much this increases the potential for shorts. See below (which I wrote earlier on similar damage caused by carrying naked cells in a pocket).
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That would be my guess too for the most likely cause of these pocket ventings. Probably the wrapper wears away due to rubbing up against other objects while walking. This leaves the positive terminal less than 1/4 inch away from the top of the exposed metal can - which is wholly negative - so a short requires only a short metallic object (coins, keys, etc) bridging the two (e.g. connecting the red arrowheads in the photo below).

Probably many newbies wrongly think that a short requires a longer and less probable connection from the top (positive) to bottom (negative) terminal, not realizing that the entire can is also negative. This is something that should be stressed more in basic safety literature, since it differs dramatically from other cells familiar to consumers.

Yes, excellent point ... and one I have also mentioned on various occasions

The nick is rather small:




There's also another one I discovered near the negative terminal:





Do you think these are small enough not to be a concern?