My first battery failure (18650)

Looking for some insight… After 12 years vaping, I’ve suffered my first battery problem. I had a 19 month old Samsung 18650 battery in a SMOK Rigel MiniMod with a 0.69 ohm coil in a VandyVape Beserker 3 tank. Vaping at 12 watts. I had been using this combination for months. Suddenly, I felt the mod get real hot. I opened the cover and saw smoke, so I popped the battery out onto a concrete floor.

The battery didn’t exploded or show flame, but took a very long time to cool down. The wrapper had bubbled off around the positive post. It now reads 0.5 volts on a multi meter. The SMOK mod looked OK, so I put in a new battery. This time a 2 month old Molicel. Same mod, same tank, new battery.

I vaped maybe 6 to 8 mils of juice, and it happened again. Sudden over heating. Again, I popped the battery out. It was very hot and took over 20 minutes to cool down. It shows no physical damage, and the wrapper is full. But it reads 0 volts on the multi meter.

Common sense says this points to a fault in the mod. Two batteries destroyed in 3 days. So I’ll trash it and the 2 batteries. But I’d like to know what happened, and if there could be any operator error. Has anybody seen this, anybody have a clue?

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Is the coil shorted? If not its something with the mod. There should have been short protection

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Many moons ago I had an original Istick 20w do something very similar. I don’t know if you’re aware but those little mods had an inbuilt battery.

It was working fine and needed charging as normal once depleted. I charged it and it worked normally for about an hour and then the battery died suddenly. I was unsure but decided to charge it again and it charged as normal but once I’d taken two hits the mod heated up so very fast to the stage where I was just able to hold until I ran to the door and chucked it out onto the concrete. It just span around smoking profusely until presumably it just burnt out. No flames but it frightened the life out of me.

I thought there and then if I ever had any indication of a dodgy battery in the future it’s going to battery heaven.

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I had a similar issue many years ago with my first Lost Vape Therion DNA75. After a few years of using it I found that the battery would start to get very warm as soon as it was inserted into the mod. My first though was a shorted board but after tearing it down I found corrosion in the wires that connect the battery to the main board. After removing and replacing the wires I never had any other issues with the battery getting warm or overheating. Now it could still be a board issue though most vape circuit boards have built in short protection that will not allow the board to fire if it detects a short. If the battery gets hot without firing the mod then its either an wiring issue or even battery contact issue.

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Sounds like the mod is causing your problem. If not causing it, then the protection features aren’t catching what the problem is - like it should.

I have never had a built-in battery mod not act up in some way in a short amount of time. I usually stay away from them.

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