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What went wrong inside recalled Anker PowerCore 10000 power banks?

lumafield.com

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

#91

Post by subscribed »

XorNot wrote: post #64
yegle wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you miss the "it's still cheaper then building in the US" part? US manufacturers aren't doomed: they already don't exist, and the infrastructure needed to support them also does not exist.

Smarter Every Day had a very interesting video about trying to make a reasonably simple barbecue tool entirely in the US.

Close to impossible without a serious time investment and dedication.

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

#92

Post by FpUser »

Spooky23 wrote: post #71
yegle wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Suppliers are always low/no trust unless you’re a sucker. The only difference is that is more difficult to hold Chinese suppliers accountable. Americans will happily cheat you as well.

>"Americans will happily cheat you as well."

I did not have too much experience with US manufacturers. I however can talk about Canada and Brasil. My experience with Brasil was stellar. Canada - you better fucking watch. As for China - I did order directly high power DC/DC converters. Those were available in the US and China. China came 10 times cheaper ($25 vs $250 apiece). The devices where we have installed those still work like a charm more than a decade after.

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

#93

Post by Zak »

kube-system wrote: post #75
Zak wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish more devices took field-replaceable cylindrical Li-ion cells. They're pretty common in flashlights and rare in other products where they would be advantageous.

That's probably an advantage for people who know what they're doing, and more dangerous for people who don't.

That's true, but it's pretty common to stick a protection circuit on the end of a cell, making it similarly safe to the proprietary Li-ion batteries that power cameras and the like.

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

#94

Post by bityard »

godelski wrote: post #76

First off, I love Luma Field. Always incredible to see what's going on inside things. Even just fun to scroll through their Twitter. Second, Anker is one of the few companies I actually have a very high trust for. A few years back I bought a wall charger[0] from them, it has 2 USB-C and a Type A. A month in, one of the Type-C ports wouldn't charge if the other port was being used. If you send a support ticket they an…

Anker is above average, but the bar for average when it comes to Chinese electronics is, "might not burn down your house immediately."

For reasons probably bordering on OCD, I watch a LOT of teardown videos of various electronics. And one thing that always strikes me is how a company with a product will routinely and often change what's inside, while the model number and exterior appearance stays the same.

For example, I wanted to buy a big 12V LiFePo4 battery and all of the cheapest ones are on Amazon. Amazon reviews are generally garbage because they're all borderline fake (from useless Viners, or wanna-be useless Viners). The only "honest" reviews of these I could find were YouTube teardowns where they basically have to destroy the case in order to take it apart. I would watch a teardown of one popular battery, and then run across a different teardown of the same model from someone else and the internals of each would be completely different. Completely different cells, battery management board, wires, construction everything. But they both looked identical on the outside.

Finished product manufacturers in China rarely have a consistent supply chain. They are negotiating suppliers and batches of components constantly, and are constantly re-engineering everything about the product, except for the external appearance of the case. This Luma Field article confirms what I've already run across myself.

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

#96

Post by Zak »

y7r4m wrote: post #67
Zak wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish more devices took field-replaceable cylindrical Li-ion cells. They're pretty common in flashlights and rare in other products where they would be advantageous.

It would be awesome if we were able to get more things besides vapes (and apparently some flashlights; I assume there are many niches where they are common) to use 18650 or even 21700 li-ion cells. I see most people I know buy AAs by the pallet and go through them regularly for their controllers, led lights, kids toys, etc.. and few I believe bother to dispose of them correctly. Also, repeating your sentiment, for al…

I actually have a Bluetooth speaker that takes a removable 18650. It was branded "Polaris V8", but I think it's a white label product that's no longer in production. It still works, and most other ten year old Bluetooth speakers probably don't.

I'm with you on the risk/benefit calculation. E-waste is bad, and the option to bring a spare battery makes a lot of products more useful. A Li-ion cell can be dangerous if mishandled, but less so than a jug of gasoline or larger power tools.

This can be considerably mitigated by sticking a protection circuit on the end of a cell, which makes it no more dangerous than the proprietary Li-ion batteries used in things like cameras.

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

#98

Post by themaninthedark »

maxglute wrote: post #80
nomel wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Chabuduo mindset [1] is a very real thing IMO high tech cost optimization is like the opposite of chabuduo - it's not half-assing, but over value engineer under pressure. The PRC's "amazing" manufacturing system fosters adversarial competition down the supply chain because there are so many competitors, packed with technical talent incentivized to value-engineer the shit out of everything to squeeze out fractions of…

Value engineering is great and all but that doesn't sound like it is the only factor at play.

> 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).

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

#99

Post by kube-system »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #23
amelius wrote: post #11

Doesn't Anker use x-rays or similar in the production process?

I doubt it, that’s some Apple level QA that hardly any company does.

Literally on the same website as this post you'll find testimonials of companies that use CT scanners to find leaks in cosmetics bottles, and to refine the fit of a deodorant cap.

https://www.lumafield.com/case-studies/loreal

https://www.lumafield.com/case-studies/case-study-enabling-8...

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

#100

Post by kube-system »

Zak wrote: post #93
kube-system wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably an advantage for people who know what they're doing, and more dangerous for people who don't.

That's true, but it's pretty common to stick a protection circuit on the end of a cell, making it similarly safe to the proprietary Li-ion batteries that power cameras and the like.

It's also common to not put protection on the end of an 18650, which is probably a big reason we don't see more of these in user-serviceable devices. Even if you ship a device with a protected cell, the inherent implication of an 18650 socket is that someone is going to buy a cell from somewhere else and stick it in there. (and maybe throw a few in their junk drawer along with some loose change and rusty silverware)
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