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What went wrong inside recalled Anker PowerCore 10000 power banks?

lumafield.com

51–60 of 308 posts

Re: What went wrong inside recalled Anker PowerCore 10000 power banks?

#52
post #21

FWIW this has caused a big storm in China. The root of the issue is known to be caused by the battery cell vendor Amprius changing the battery design w/o notifying the power bank manufacturers. AFAIKT Amprius lost the 3C certification (a certification in China) because of this incident. This is one of the Chinese reports on the issue: https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_31048287 Excerpt from the report above (tr…

I work in manufacturing in the US. Incoming quality control, for Chinese vendors, is necessarily set up with zero-trust. This isn't a "trust but verify" sort of thing, it's strictly "do not trust". Assume that, at every step of the chain, there will be a lie: change of process, material change, collected data, and that the product being given to you is even yours (delivering a knockoff at the final step, and reselling yours on the gray market).

This is all common knowledge, proven by example after example that it's necessary to have zero trust. It's truly an adversarial system. All the extra engineering effort for IQC is still cheaper. And, there's rarely an alternative to the amazing manufacturing ecosystem that is China.

After tracking down several of these types of issues, it appears that the Chabuduo mindset [1] is a very real thing.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32465780

Re: What went wrong inside recalled Anker PowerCore 10000 power banks?

#53

I have a recalled Anker battery sitting on my stoop, lest it burn my house down. Who on earth (NE USA ideally) will accept this for safe disposal / recycling? Normal battery recycling places don’t want a recalled battery, natch. Serious question, pls help

Hmm, got a PowerCore 10000 here, but Anker's UK site don't seem to have a listed as a recalled model (https://www.anker.com/uk/product-recalls)

Are models sold in some regions different/known-good?

Should probably at least discharge it to be safe(r), I guess.

Re: What went wrong inside recalled Anker PowerCore 10000 power banks?

#55
I have two of these powerbanks, one ordered in 2019 and another in 2021. Amazon sent me scary emails saying these things will kill me. Anker's recall site says I'm not affected and the product is safe to use.

I'm not sure who to trust, but I've erred on the side of caution and trashed the batteries. Because it's not worth dying in a fire over $30 in batteries.

Re: What went wrong inside recalled Anker PowerCore 10000 power banks?

#56
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Lumafield does some of my favorite marketing ever. It adds more (absolute) value to the world than they receive back from it. Their monthly CT scans are some of my favorite small joys: https://www.scanofthemonth.com/ I mean, there's probably very good ROI on this marketing; I'm not saying they're foolish or selfless. Just that it doesn't cost them that much to do, so it's a win-win for everyone.

Last updated scan of the month... August 2023?

Lumafield co-founder and CEO here. Stay tuned - we’re bringing SotM back!

Re: What went wrong inside recalled Anker PowerCore 10000 power banks?

#57
post #31
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last updated scan of the month... August 2023?

Oh no, not super promising. I only know learnt of Lumafield and I'm very impressed, would love to see more updates on what the company is up to.

They're still posting stuff to their blog https://www.lumafield.com/blog

Re: What went wrong inside recalled Anker PowerCore 10000 power banks?

#58
post #52
post #21

FWIW this has caused a big storm in China. The root of the issue is known to be caused by the battery cell vendor Amprius changing the battery design w/o notifying the power bank manufacturers. AFAIKT Amprius lost the 3C certification (a certification in China) because of this incident. This is one of the Chinese reports on the issue: https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_31048287 Excerpt from the report above (tr…

I work in manufacturing in the US. Incoming quality control, for Chinese vendors, is necessarily set up with zero-trust. This isn't a "trust but verify" sort of thing, it's strictly "do not trust". Assume that, at every step of the chain, there will be a lie: change of process, material change, collected data, and that the product being given to you is even yours (delivering a knockoff at the final step, and resellin…

This seems to be startlingly contrast to all the talks about "US manufacturers are absolutely doomed w/o Chinese vendors' great products and quality control" when Trump increased the tariffs.

I can only find https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY but earlier this year it was all over YouTube.

Re: What went wrong inside recalled Anker PowerCore 10000 power banks?

#59
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anker should know better by this point. Changing specs without notifying customers is the basic formula of every Chinese manufacturer. They must have gotten lazy with their internal QA/QC processes and random sampling.

Or the changes weren't immediately visible externally.

No, quality control is never based on external packaging, for anything*, since quality control is about the objective quality of the final product: if you're not measuring it, you're not controlling that parameters quality. For batteries, this includes things like x-ray to verify all the layer geometries and assembly, materials, etc [1].

[1] Battery tester: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3IE3npEcuc

*unless the product is visible external packaging.

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