Need some battery help...top button loose

I have several chargers...the Pila, a Trustfire and Ultrafire (139). I also have a bunch of 18650s: AW and Sonshine (2800 mah). I put the Sonshines in the Ultrafire (139) and they were a little long...I pushed them in. After charging and upon removal, the button was pushed to the side on each battery. I re-centered the top buttons, but now they slide around easily. The batteries took the charge and work in a light...but I am afraid I damaged a seal or messed up the protection function.

My question: Should I toss the batteries and not risk leakage or protection failure? Just chalk it up to a lesson learned?

Help, help from a battery guru!!!!!

i kinda need pictures.

what was holding the top button? the shrink wrap around the cell? a weld tab? is the (plastic) wrap around the cell damaged?

if its an "added" consumer button top, it will not effect the batteries own containment/seal, if the protection is on top , then you will indeed want to re-solidify the button and any loose protection, just so it doesnt get worse or short out anywhere.
you could have "crushed" a protection "washer" the cardboard or plastic thing that shims up the button, and keeps the protection board from being crushed/shorted.

added button tops and protection holdings can be fixed.
the only risk you (probably) have is from a short , because protection connections Require both "poles" of the battery to be connected to them, so the one pole is very close to the other, with insulation protecting the connection, as long as they dont come together from crushing, it wont short.

No damage to the shrink wrap around the cell. The button appeared to be held in place by the shrinkwrap to be honest. No tac welds. The button appears to be an add on to a flat-top 18650...the reason I say this is the battery is longer than any other 18650 I have seen.

Maybe I need to sacrifice one and dissect it. Crap, they aren't cheap though.

Sounds like dissection and chalking it up to a learning experience is the best course of action.

Well, I can have some fun taking them apart.

Beware, the 139 charger takes on shorty 18650!!!!!

Thank you for your response and advice

keithja said:

No damage to the shrink wrap around the cell. The button appeared to be held in place by the shrinkwrap to be honest. No tac welds. The button appears to be an add on to a flat-top 18650...the reason I say this is the battery is longer than any other 18650 I have seen.

Maybe I need to sacrifice one and dissect it. Crap, they aren't cheap though.

Click to expand...

sure just pick up some Battery shrink wrap first, and it'll be a piece of cake, , , ok then it will be a learning experience , , , ok well then at least its an adventure

Funny, I just had the exact thing happen to me with my new Sonshine cells. Sad because they worked great and had better runtime than the Ultrafire 3000mAh cells in my SSC P7 dive light.

From the way they squished around when warm off the charger and then somewhat solid after cooling, I bet that they were held on with glue that got soft with heat and shifted due to the pressure of the charger. My mitigation was to drop a drop of superglue through the button vent hole to hopefully hold it in place and then to use a longer charger that doesn't put any sideways pressure on the button. Hmm, maybe I should try my Sonshine charger???

Dennis.