BEWARE cheap Chinese USB battery packs

[Omaroo]

If only I could say that I've bought my last Chinese-made item off eBay. I am yet to find anything built in that country which I've bought on eBay that isn't out to prove that they simply don't care what absolute garbage they sell to me.

This was simply sitting in my camera bag in the car on a cool day - along with all my OM-D and RX1 gear. I opened the bag and reached in to retrieve my driving glasses, and felt something very warm inside the bag. Damned lucky I did... :mad2:

I can't imagine how it didn't catch fire and take my cameras and car along with it.

[mercedes_sl1970]

Lucky you found it when you did!

[Marke]

thats pretty scary, you were lucky .

[wasyoungonce]

Jeezz you were very lucky. I've seen a Li-Ion in thermal runaway...well nearly in runaway...seconds from it.

Apparently the cell density or distance between electrodes is so close this is one of the issues with Li...this spacer is easily damaged causing thermal runaway.

But ambient temp causing this is something I wouldn't immediately think of...a quick google shows them to be dangerous 130C and above so looks like these were out-gassing way before this.

I suspect these were some type of Chinese dodgy counterfeit...which we all buy, because there cheap! A lesson learned for us all.:shrug:

[gary]

Hi Chris,

Were these powering anything at the time or disconnected?

If the later, the more serious concern is that the supplier is putting these on aircraft
when they airmail them. If it were airmail in the cargo hold of a passenger aircraft, there
is the potential to bring down something like a 747 with over 300 people on board.

Best Regards

Gary

[Omaroo]

Cheers guys - yes, dodgy indeed.

Gary - that's my concern too. It was disconnected, and just sitting there in my bag. It had been charged the night before, and the LED charge meter indicated just under "full". I didn't realise that it was going to become quite that "full"...

[multiweb]

This is very alarming. Worth following up and reporting. As Gary pointed out a bit of a worry.

[bojan]

This is not only the Chinese speciality.. and not a new problem -
have a look here, year 2006:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1526424/Exploding-laptops-prompt-Dell-battery-recall.html

Only a limited number of battery manufactures are really making LiIon cells.. and they all depend on even smaller number of material suppliers..

I remember the similar problem 15-20 (?) years ago, this time it was with exploding tantalum electrolytic capacitors, tantalum powder manufactured by Union Carbide was contaminated.. resulting in recall of virtually all tant caps from the world market, and shortages that affected industry for couple of months, if not a full year.

This is just a global market.. nothing more, nothing less.

[wasyoungonce]

Reportedly already happened (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-14/aircraft-fires-tied-to-lithium-battery-cargo-prompt-new-un-rule.html), but on UPS cargo plane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines_Flight_6) and other crashes are suspected to be caused form similar Li-Ion battery fires. No one really knows for sure but this is why aviation and dangerous goods carrying Li-ion batteries have come in place.

That said...they are still shipped by air in mobile phones, computers, cameras etc etc.

I can understand why pilots and aviation companies being testy about them.

[gary]

Hi Chris,

Well first of all I am glad you are alright.

Australia Post list Lithium Ion batteries on the Dangerous items list and
though they will accept them for mailing, they can't be carried by air.
See http://auspost.com.au/media/documents/customer-guidelines-for-lithium-batteries.pdf

IATA have a complex set of regulations governing them but a lot of it appears to
depend on the sender ensuring the quality of the items is high, properly declaring
them and taking additional precautions -
http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/cargo/dgr/Documents/Lithium-Battery-Guidance-2013-V1.1.pdf

As gray market batteries, what chance they were ever tested according to the
UN Manual of Tests and Criteria Part III, Section 38.3 -
http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/danger/publi/manual/Rev5/English/03en_part3.pdf

[AG Hybrid]

C'mon Mac Man why so surprised? You know full well you get what you pay for. You should know buying cheap ebay is a roll of the dice on its best day.

[Stardrifter_WA]

Lucky escape Chris. That is the very reason why I would never buy a chines battery. I have had a similar, but nowhere near as bad, experience. :sadeyes:

I never use generic batteries for my Canon 60D now, only original. They may cost more, but I can be reasonable assured they won't fail.

Cheers Peter

[Octane]

Exactly.

Considering how many thousands we spend on gear, why is it such a hard proposition to spend (perhaps up to $100) on a legitimate second battery?

Lucky escape, Chris.

H

[Garbz]

Because the extra cost is just the manufacturer jacking up the price for often the same product.

Plenty of manufacturers have been caught out by this. Sony products and IBM laptops (or were they already Lenovo?), were the worst offenders which made the news because of wide spread issues causing fires or even fireworks, but I have thrown away legitimate Samsung and LG batteries which also bulged.

Or perhaps my most relevant anecdote, I checked my telecopse one night during an imaging session and windows had and error on the screen saying "problem with battery" the battery was making a screetching noise, and I nearly burnt my hand when I yanked the official Dell battery out of the laptop.

And quite on the flip side my cheap Chinese after market batteries have outperformed and outlasted Nikon's official equivalents.

It's not a money thing, some of us just don't like getting screwed by companies.

[Omaroo]

These are not camera batteries. I only ever buy genuine articles when it comes to these, as they are logic-controlled these days and have a certain level of nouse built in. The knock-offs don't play with the camera like the real ones do.

This is a 12,000mAh 5v auxiliary power pack and charger via its USB port and is designed to charge your phone or camera out in the bush. When I bought this there were no quality alternatives of this capacity being sold that either Houghy, Greg Bradley or I could find at the time. Some high-end products are now available to address this segment.

[seeker372011]

Damn wish I had read this before I just bought a high capacity pack off eBay

It's not the money..it's cheap enough but am even worried about keeping it in the house.

[pjphilli]

Hi
Just picking up on this "old" thread which is still relevant.

I had contemplated buying a spare 11.1volt 26Wh battery for my HP Mini
F.02 notebook. However, I have noticed that portable recharging battery
packs seem to be coming more prevalent and I was wondering if such a device could substitute for a spare battery? It would be more convenient
to simply plug the pack into the notebook rather than change over the battery. Also recharging of the battery pack would be easier.
Any suggestions?

As far as avoiding purchase of "cheap" batteries of Chinese origin this
appears to be hard to do as I have noticed that even "genuine" manufacturer's parts are now often made in China or some such.
One would hope that the genuine manufacturer would have high quality
control on such products but literature I have read on this subject suggests that this is a difficult thing to achieve when things are being made in distant Chinese factories.

[gary]

Hi Peter,

Look no further than the recent Samsung Galaxy Note 7 case.

Samsung announced on 22 January 2017 that indeed the fires were due
to defects in Lithium Ion batteries.

But not just one set of batteries - but two separate sets with two different
faults.

Samsung has stated that the original sets of batteries shipped had a design flaw.

But in the rush to manufacture replacements, a totally
separate manufacturing fault was introduced that also resulted in fires.

See -
https://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-answers-burning-note-7-questions-vows-better-batteries/

This is from a company with a market capitalization of some USD237 billion.
They were reported to have 700 engineers from their mobile division
investigating the exploding phone problem.

Samsung stated that they had sourced the batteries from two suppliers.

[pjphilli]

Hi Gary

Wow - how many "engineers" do you need to fix a battery problem!
(Or for that matter to change a light bulb!).

The original battery for my HP Mini notebook (which is about 5 years old)
is a "genuine" Hewlett Packard battery which says on the pack "cell origin China further processed in China" whatever that means.

As well as the Samsung problem I was reading that large li-ion batteries installed in Boeing Dreamliner aircraft have caught fire on at least two occasions. Boeing now encases these batteries in a fireproof container with direct venting to the outside of the aircraft in case of another fire.
The good old "belt and braces" fix.

I think that a large part of the problem is the race to produce batteries of high capacity and small size for the use in cars, homes, portable appliances etc. This perhaps has led to untried technology and manufacturing techniques. You can bet that the separating insulators etc inside such batteries are reduced to the bare minimum to save weight and space. Also I guess such internal parts would need to be of the highest quality and purity.

Meanwhile, I will continue my search for an external battery pack - at least if it is destroyed it will not take my notebook with it (hopefully I will also survive!).

Cheers Peter

[gary]

And like they say, "you ain't seen nothing yet!"

Come mid-2017, the new Tesla Motor's battery Gigafactory in Nevada will
begin cranking out 75 lithium-ion cells per second for their new Model 3 cars.

It is claimed to be the world's biggest building by footprint and will
produce at least 35 gigawatt-hours of batteries per year.

Dec 30th 2016 article on the factory appeared in IEEE Spectrum magazine -
http://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/advanced-cars/2017-is-the-makeorbreak-year-for-teslas-gigafactory

[pjphilli]

"Oh Brave New World that hath such people in it".
Interesting to see that they will manufacture in the US. I guess that highly
automated factories permit moves back to US production. Remains to be seen whether the quality is good. With the prices coming down rapidly it will make the economy of roof top solar with batteries pretty attractive. I wonder about the problem of having a big potential battery bomb in the house though. Maybe adopt the Boeing fix - put it in a big insulated box
vented directly to the atmosphere or a battery shed in the backyard (keep
it away from my mount!).