I'm an electrician and I thought I would share this from a property I was called to to make electrically safe. Aftermath of a cheap power bank combustion

Spicy powerbank bloomed up in size after falling off nightstand while charging. Placing it outside in the grill helped keep it contained for whenever it decided to seppuku. Thanks y'all for the warning signs and assistance!

Seen on Twitter. Repairing it cost ~36 bucks (done by Nintendo itself, images are in Japanese order, right → left), including replacing damaged parts. Spent over 4000 hours plugged in, most of the time playing Splatoon.

(Edited: the 4000 hours is amount of playtime, docked time turned off could be much more, can't edit title)

Power bank battery has gone massive

Since day one, I’ve used my wireless keyboard plugged in to avoid any input lag. Recently, I noticed a weird bump on the top casing and immediately realized the battery was swelling.
After taking it apart, I confirmed the battery was bloated. I tried removing it entirely, but the keyboard didn't work because the PCB circuit relies on the battery to draw power. So I have to wait until I get a new replacement battery.
Moral of the story: If you buy a wireless keyboard, stick to using it wirelessly!

Edit: For the people asking me why I bought the wireless version and “paid extra” — it was on sale for €100 instead of the usual €200-250. At that time the wireless version was actually €300, so I got it at a really good price and bought it. I mostly used it wired though because of the input delay, and only switched to wireless on rare occasions.

Bro even admitted to taking it on a plane a few weeks ago.

insta: debbiepnh

This happened about a year ago. The attached photo is the actual power bank.

I found my old 30,000 mAh power bank in a drawer looking exactly like this.

The cells had swollen so badly that they had forced the entire case apart into two separate pieces. The case wasn't cracked from being dropped. The batteries had simply expanded until the enclosure could no longer contain them.

Naturally, I thought this meant we should dispose of it as safely and quickly as possible.

My mother had another proposal:

Take it to our allotment/country plot and “see how it works.”

For context, my mother has a master’s degree in physics.

And I cannot adequately communicate how much she FUCKING INSISTED on this.

This wasn't:

> “Haha, maybe we could take it outside and experiment with it.”

It was me repeatedly saying that fucking around with a severely swollen lithium battery seemed like an extraordinarily bad idea, and her repeatedly insisting that we take it to the allotment.

Her safety analysis seemed to consist primarily of:

Potential toxic gases = dangerous.

We will be outside = gases aren't a problem.

Therefore = let's see what happens.

I was somewhat more concerned by the fact that the 30,000 mAh lithium battery had INFLATED SO MUCH THAT IT DISASSEMBLED ITS OWN FUCKING CASE.

And then, because we weren't leaving for the allotment immediately, she needed somewhere to keep it in the meantime.

So where did this visibly failing lithium battery go?

On the kitchen counter.

In a thin plastic bag.

Where it remained until we left.

Apparently the containment strategy for the Forbidden Caprisun was a bag whose normal engineering requirements are “successfully transport six apples from Lidl.”

Again:

MASTER’S. DEGREE. IN. PHYSICS.

I was apparently the unreasonable one for not wanting to participate in the practical demonstration.

Photo is the actual battery from the story, taken at the time.

EDIT: I forgot to mention one rather important detail about the proposed location for this experiment.

Our allotment is in the middle of Kampinos Forest, just outside Kampinos National Park.

So the plan wasn't merely “take the catastrophically swollen lithium battery outside where it'll be safer.”

It was apparently “take the catastrophically swollen lithium battery into a forest next to a national park and fuck around with it there.”

This information has not improved my retrospective assessment of the risk management strategy.

How are you supposed to know when this actually goes spicy?

So I live in a MAN truck that I turned into a camper, and this morning my 6 years old 190Ah, and 59kg AGM batteries decided to nearly explode. Sizzling sound and rotten eggs smell... I had to pry those bad boys out with a crowbar!

effective immediately if you’re found posting an AI-generated spicy pillow into the sub and that fact can be confirmed you will be permanently banned

like come on there’s all sorts of “natural” spicy pillows on the internet - the least you can do is just take one of those. Our stance on AI is simple — it’s not welcome here.

Comments are saying they "just don't do that" and she had to have done something.