'Exploding e-cig cost me 7 teeth, burned my face – and broke my sink!'

Damaged his sink?

Looks nothing like any form of blast damage to me. And having wrecked a few sinks in my time, the explosive force to smash one...well, I wouldn't want to be withing fifty yards.

Of course, he might have wacked the sink himself involuntarily as the e-fag went pop, but personally I'm not buying this tragic tale of vaping woe.

Stored Energy

Put enough energy into a small place, a battery, and put it next to something fragile while pulling a good current from said battery, it is only a matter of time before some units experience catastrophic failure. They don't allow them on aircraft for good reason and storing it in your pocket near your....

Sounds like me to be a good reason....

to stop inhaling toxic heated substances. Like those that contain nicotine, or THC (take your pick).

If you want oral gratification, a nicely formed wooden dowel will probably do the trick. Paint the end "red" and the body white, and let everyone complain at your inert oral fixation.

I have a sinking feeling this is just another dodgy lawsuit. You may think that cynical but I'm basin it on the sue everyone culture.

L-Ions are powerful and dangerous

And these have been around for a few years now. I use the THC based units, but they are essentially the same kind of thing; a smallish unit, and a LI battery with some timing and charging logic circuitry, and the 514(?) threaded connector. I had a "fancy" but cheap unit dressed up to look like a Sherlock Holmes pipe, only the bowl was the battery compartment, and had a fat LI battery in it. Trouble with that one was the spring under the battery was not up to the task and when shorted out the battery "smoked" itself. No fire or explosion, but once you catch even the slightest whiff of burning battery that was it. I got rid of it straight away. Anyway, I'm not going to stop using them just yet, but will monitor them for odd behaviour. Never had a cell phone catch fire either, but it can happen and I'll keep using them hoping I'll catch any problems before they blow up. :) This kind of this can happen to other burning stuffs. I had a joint blow up once, but that was from a pot seed, so not as dangerous as it is unpleasant.

The actual problems here...

...well, actually, there are a few.

First of all, he took a battery fresh from the charger, and chucked it into a low-resistance mech - that's not a great idea as the battery is a bit chemically volatile following a fresh charge. This is fine in most cases, but in high current devices, it can be dangerous. This is the nature of lithium based batteries in near-capacity-draw situations.

Secondly, his mech was a hybrid - where the positioning of the posts at the bottom of the atomiser are critical to prevent a thermal runaway from a dead short. Hybrids are a fucking stupid design, because it's stupidly easy to get a dead short. You can probably work out how from this image.

Third - and this is the second worst kicker - up until recently, his shop had been maintaining his mod, including building his coils to a safe resistance, checking the clearance of the RDA pin, etc.

They had recently stopped doing this because the upcoming US FDA regulations say that if they do that, they become a tobacco products manufacturer, which would either bankrupt them, get them shut down, or both. So to avoid this risk, they stopped servicing e-cigs, just selling them - leaving the customer to DIY it. The FDA has only recently clarified that yes, shops can change pre-made atomisers, but the wording of the rule means that it's technically impossible for a shop to work on a mech like this due to it using handmade coils, and not be in breach of the letter of the law.

And the joint biggest problems here - by his own admission (later in in the postings on his FB page), he wasn't entirely sure what he was doing when it came to the maintenance of the device, because he'd left everything for the shop to sort out; he thought he was doing everything correctly, but sadly wasn't.

The other side of that, is that when customer comes in asking for a hybrid mech mod, the shop didn't ask "Why?".

Like kit cars, sporting rifle shooting and motorbike track days, hybrid mods are something that are always - without exception - best left to those who can seek them out, and demonstrate that they understand the risks.

Sadly, some shops really don't seem to give a fuck.

Which pisses me off, because if you look through that FB post (where all of the above info comes from) you'll see dozens of people inferring that they'll go back to ciggies, and sharing it saying they're going back to smoking because it's 'safer'.

So a slow handclap to the shop for failing to do any due diligence on their sales (if you're having to rebuild someone's mech for them because they can't do it, then they shouldn't have the mech, and that goes doubly so for a hybrid - end of story) and a slightly more sympathetic one for the unfortunate user for not doing the research on a device that in normal use basically runs as a near dead short on a cell that has about as much kick as a 4/10 shotgun shell if you get it wrong and pop it.

There's a good argument that mechs are, these days, irrelevant even in the low-ohmage world, just as they became a few years ago for e-cigs that had a resistance of >1ohm - yes, you used to get mech mods for 1.8ohm devices, before pocketable 20w regulated mods made them look pointless.

These day it's quite easy to get a three or four cell mod that will (just like in the >1 ohm world a few years ago) make any mech look like a complete waste of time, while also being effectively unbustable in normal use - short circuit protection, undercurrent protection, etc - while also being able to kick out 300w, more than most mechs can safely provide, regardless of what anyone tells you about their 'pulse' current.

I fully expect that we'll see pictures of this chap plastered all over the news for a while (because the rarity of such events is still newsworthy), all while every day three house fires are started by normal cigarettes.

In London alone....

Steven R

PS: If you're interested in seeing what informed people other than me have to say about this, I'd recommend this video from VapourTrails.tv on Monday, where this was covered in detail, by people extremely familiar with the tech and the risks involved.

A "Twisted Vapers RDA" is just the "tank"

i.e. bit where the eliquid is heated up by a bit of wire.

Whats of much more interest is the unmentioned "mod" - the bit your screw the tank to, provides the current, and actually contains the battery.

The problem here is that these eCig things is that smokers - who quite rightly are pissed off for all the taxes they've been paying for cigarettes that have ever decreasing amounts of nicotine in them - find them online for cheap.

Any old clown can buy a batch of devices and liquids from AliExpress/AliBaba for cheap and set up an online store or shop on the high street for less than what a supermarket or other store could sell them for. The problem is the cheapo owner is buying the stock cheap, because the devices themselves are cheap, and the smoker will buy the cheap devices from the cheapo owner because they're smoking ecigs for the price point.

This also applies to phone chargers and other things that manufacturers try to sell at extortionate prices. The users will want a second phone charger, go on Amazon/eBay/AliExpress and buy one for £2 instead of £25. But the quality of these things is questionable. I watch a chap on YouTube called bigclivedotcom (don't Google it, just YouTube it) and he tears these things down and shows the quality of them. Some are OK, but is your house really worth putting a £2 charger in to your mains and hoping it doesn't explode and cause a fire?

The guy used to have his coils made for him by his vape shop because he didn't have the knowledge to do it himself. The FDA prohibited it, so he had to.

Apparently he somehow made a 0.06 ohm coil. That's 50 to 70 amperes drawn from the battery. No 18650 battery can withstand this for more than a few seconds. Add a hybrid mod to the mix (with the high possibilities of short circuit) and a dreadful accident is bound to happen when the user doesn't have enough knowledge.

Hardware/manufacturers faulty? Not.

User faulty? Hardly, if only by ignorance.

Reseller faulty? Perhaps. They might have seen he was clueless.

FDA faulty? Sure. This one's definitely on them.

Your charging an IMR 16850 battery off of USB and you wonder why the battery exploded? Get a Nitecore Charger to charge IMR 18650 batteries, end of.

3000 mAh battery?

Can anyone tell me WHY this would be necessary? Is it so you can smoke for a month without recharging? Surely it doesn't draw more juice than a cell phone, which can easily last all day on that much power! What could it possibly be doing that it needs a battery like that?

I have to say there's an element of YDI here for being such a tool that he can't just vape like a normal hipster, but has to go three steps further than the crowd to try to differentiate himself.

1st, Chinese off-brand (UltraFire, etc etc etc) 18650s that claim 3700 mAH or whatever rarely even have 1000mAH. I've tested several batches of these and found no more than about 800mAH discharging to the 2.5V minimum safe voltage at a one hour discharge rate.

2nd, ANY device like this should be using the slightly more expensive PROTECTED 18650, NOT the unprotected ones. these usually have a button on the + end instead of a recessed contact, and are slightly longer. Unprotected LiIon batteries are only safe if they are permanently installed in a system with a integral protection circuit. the protection circuit prevents overcharge, over-discharge, and limits the max current output.

ecig explosion in mans face caught on cctv (different person than this story)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKm0Hz70OdU

Apparently he got 12 stiches in his face.

e-cigs hurt several people.

But cigarettes are the leading cause of all house fires leading to death - a rather more significant number. (neglecting any deaths due to normal operation of cigs).

Cloud chasers, subohm

There's an aspect to this sad tale that hasn't been mentioned here. His device seems to have been a non-regulated unit firing a very low resistance coil. People do this to get denser vapor, it tastes better and looks cool when you blow out the clouds. I think this is a worrying trend aside from all the electrical danger. Vaping looks a lot safer than fags, but that density of vapor tastes nice because it is carrying a lot more of the flavorings. Of the ingredients in vapor, the flavors are the unknown and potentially dangerous ones. Thousands of compounds are used, and they are approved for food use on the basis that there isn't evidence to ban them. Nobody has much evidence at all what long term inhalation might do to the lung epithelium. My guess is that some will be harmful, and heating them may exacerbate this. So I would not be a sub-ohm cloud chaser, I stick to simple flavors like menthol and low wattage. Each to their own, but that's my take on it.

Still costs less than cigarettes

Cost me two grandparents

Priorities

OK you have a socially acceptable addiction, I get that and you need to supply the craving. However therein lies your first and foremost problem, you have a serious addiction to a chemical that does nothing good for you and you need to address that rather than finding ever more daft, and it would seem dangerous electronic gadgets, to satisfy it. Health risks aside for a second, apart from Humphrey Bodgart no one ever looks cool smoking, you look like a junkie with a infantile fetish for sucking on a dummy!

A guy hurt himself while vaping? Not feeling a lot of sympathy here.

Mech Mods are stupid and dangerous

His fault for running .6 ohm on a standard battery, destined to blow up.

millions of batteries sold by Tesla. not a single batter fire. a battery is not just a battery. opt for a supplier that has industrial liability, i.e. makes batteries for laptops and cars. if they blow the makers cough up.