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Safety Warning about the TrustFire All-in-One Charger

iskor12

iskor12

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DealExtreme: $8.81 TrustFire All-in-One Charger (for 10430/10440/14500/16340 /17670/18650/CR123A)

Mine caught on fire while trying to charge 2 18650 batteries. Lets just say that I am lucky that I was in the room when it happened.

I owned it for about 3 months and I charged batteries in it all of the time. I don't have a clue why it suddenly caught on fire.

The fire came out of the charger itself. I managed to put it out quick enough to spare my batteries. I saw it put out smoke at first and then just after I unpluged it, a flame came out of the vent on the back of the charger.
 
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Xtrm2Rick

Xtrm2Rick

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damn that sounds nasty
good thing i choose an other charger, altho i doubt any charger like that is 100%safe always read allot of bad things bout those things.....

anyway certainly a good thing you where in the room.

thnx for the warning:p
 
mkdive

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hmmmm...I have one off those. Not sure I will use it inside now. (I have only used it once. I have another 18650 charger I use most of the time.

If I do use the all in one charger, Guess I will use it in the garage in a modified ammo box I use to charge some old lipo batteries I have. I had a mishap a couple years ago when a lipo exploded and rained fire all over in the garage. Good thing I was in the garage and had an extinguisher! Since then I charge my older lipo batteries in this ammo can that has sand in the bottom a couple holes drill in the side to pass through the charging cords. I keep it on a cart and wheel it out on the drive when charging.

Thanks for the heads up on the charger!

Post some pictures up of the charger. Are you going to contact DE? IF not, have you taken the charger apart to see what happened? Em interested to know what failed inside.
 
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iskor12

iskor12

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No problem. It could have been just a fluke accident, but just to be on the safe side, I thought that I would announce it, especially because I know a lot of people use them.

I can tell you this. One thing that I did notice is that the charge had lately been getting rather hot/warm while charging larger sized batteries.
 
iskor12

iskor12

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mkdive said:
hmmmm...I have one off those. Not sure I will use it inside now. (I have only used it once. I have another 18650 charger I use most of the time.

If I do use the all in one charger, Guess I will use it in the garage in a modified ammo box I use to charge some old lipo batteries I have. I had a mishap a couple years ago when a lipo exploded and rained fire all over in the garage. Good thing I was in the garage and had an extinguisher! Since then I charge my older lipo batteries in this ammo can that has sand in the bottom a couple holes drill in the side to pass through the charging cords. I keep it on a cart and wheel it out on the drive when charging.

Thanks for the heads up on the charger!

Post some pictures up of the charger. Are you going to contact DE? IF not, have you taken the charger apart to see what happened? Em interested to know what failed inside.
Click to expand...

This happened to me about a week ago. I did tear it apart...(sory no photos) and the wire on the back side was completely bare due to the rubber/plastic melting off of it. I don't know a lot about electronics, so I really couldn't tell you what the cause was. It did however look like the fire started near the power supply. I threw the charger out right after opening it, due to it's verrrrrrry bad burnt electronics smell that was stinking up my place. I live in an appartment and I don't have a garage to keep stuff like that in. Now that you have mentioned it...I wish that I would have taken pictures of it.

No...I haven't contacted DX. I don't think that they will do anything about it. After all...it's over 3 months old.
 
ndrew2505

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it could have just been a bad one. we all know dx's quality assurance isnt that good so it is possible to get a bad one every now and then. ive had mine for ~1yr and havent had any problems from it. ive even left batteries on it for almost a week and never had them explode..
 
iskor12

iskor12

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True...but why risk it? There are a lot of people on DX that have had major problems with this charger. After all....even mine didn't show any potential problems until about 2-3 weeks ago...when I noticed that it was getting that it was getting hot while it was charging. I had owned it for well over 2 months before it showed those signs.
 
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Lonewolf

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Thanks for the heads up, I clicked the link, in the dicussion at the bottom there's a mention of them getting hot, and fire. Hopfully they read it, thanks again...you might have save someone's life by this thread.

Edit: I should have read your last post, better (adhd has it's moments)
 
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Elektrotechniker

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Chinese electronics have always been dangerous. No wonder your charger caught on fire :D
I remember sometime that I saw on the tv news a man getting electroshocked while doing the irony. Guess what, the iron was made in China xD
 
lasersbee

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That too bad... that sucks... but luckily you were there..
I try to never leave chargers plugged in when I'm out of the
shop... and my chargers are placed on a small piece of 1/8"
aluminum stock to dissipate some of the heat.
Some of the charges get quite hot when the batteries are
really depleted...

Jerry
 
D

digital_blue

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You should invest in one of these:

LipoSack.com

I'm generally quite paranoid about charging lithium batteries inside; although I never had one explode/burn on me, I know several people who have had "close calls"...
 
rangedunits

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lasersbee said:
That too bad... that sucks... but luckily you were there..
I try to never leave chargers plugged in when I'm out of the
shop... and my chargers are placed on a small piece of 1/8"
aluminum stock to dissipate some of the heat.
Some of the charges get quite hot when the batteries are
really depleted...

Jerry
Click to expand...
Get me a box for that one..... :?




Thanks for telling me, i own one of these since months ago and no problems yet.
 
bryce007

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I've got that same trusfire charger. I'm super paranoid when charging lithium ions, I make sure that I'm always home when charging batteries for this exactly this reason.
 
Schrecken_Licht

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Thanks for the warning - I bought one of these chargers not long ago, and thankfully haven't had a problem the few times I have used it. But I'll open my garage door and set it on the concrete next time I use it for sure!

But yeah you have to watch some of the cheaper stuff like that - I had a glue gun a couple years ago that sparked and caught on fire (luckily I didn't have it in my hands at the time!) while it was sitting on my work bench. Because I bought it at a store here in the US (unlike foreign internet retailers like DX) I reported the product to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and they sent a guy out to my place who took it away with him (I have no idea what happened after that - I guess they only force a company to recall products if they have enough complaints). But they can only police (as far as I know) what is sold in stores here in the US. I don't think they have any control over anything that individuals import from foreign countries online.
 
JLSE

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This is certainly an odd one, I have this same unit and also include them with package deals. I would have figured this may happen to the cheaper 5$ CR123A charger.

I opened mine to compare the guts to the 5$ unit, and this charger has a nice PCB, looking fairly well designed.

Is it possible that damage from shock or liquids may have had something to do with it?

You should really post some pics of the section of board where all the scortch marks are. Id like to know approx where the trouble was... LOL, I just ordered 20 of these a week ago.. :(


*edit* I forgot too mention, I have only used this type charger with 10440 and CR123A cells, perhaps this is why ive had no issues. Though I have charged more than 10 sets of CR123A's in a row... Could be just the large cells?
 
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mkdive

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digital_blue said:
You should invest in one of these:

LipoSack.com

I'm generally quite paranoid about charging lithium batteries inside; although I never had one explode/burn on me, I know several people who have had "close calls"...
Click to expand...

That's actually pretty cool idea. When my lipo decided to erupt. It threw parts of the burning battery in every direction in a good 10'+ radius! The pieces were on fire and landed all around the garage. One small piece landed next to an old license plate I had on a table....(burned all the paint off the plate). It was like napalm! I got so paranoid about charging after that, I never charge and leave the house, or leave them unattended.
 
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