pure crap li-ion batteries  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: bills
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 02:35:41 am
content: I just received 8 of these to day.http://www.ebay.com/itm/141471146699?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AITof the 8,2 seemed to work the other 6 were at 0.1 volts these are protected cells claimed 4500 mah.I flashed the other 6 at 8.0 volts and they would charge according to my meters they will output 235mah before the the protection kicks in. than they have to be flashed again before the circuit resets.I'm I doing something wrong here? the 2 that showed good voltage are still being tested (0.170A draw)Or as I suspect pure junk.

author: HackedFridgeMagnet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 02:39:18 am
content: Lithium batteries named "UltraFire"... maybe they need to change that.

author: bills
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 02:46:38 am
content: my charger manualhttp://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/hamacc/1392om.pdf

author: bills
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 02:48:48 am
content: And yes it has been working well for the last 6 years.

author: retiredcaps
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 03:15:59 am
content: I know nothing about li-ion batteries, but I do know that a good majority of nimh batteries sold on ebay are fake, counterfeit or significantly overstated in terms of mAH capacity. I know firsthand because I have some of those fake nimh 2500mAH that acts more like a 500mAH cell and the fake weighs significantly less than a real Eneloop.Candlepowerforums talks about fake Ultrafirehttp://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?316888-Fake-Ultrafire-18650-battery-warning

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 03:17:12 am
content: Quote from: bills on March 15, 2015, 02:35:41 amYou are having a laugh, right?18650 lithium ion cells cost in the range of $10 to $20 each, and the capacity is typically in the 2500 mAh to 3000 mAh range.You bought a bunch of cells for approximately $1.50 each with 4500 mAh on the label. What do you expect of them other than to use them as paperweights?The sellers of such items expect you to know that when the price is too good to be true and the claims made are exaggerated then what you are buying is not the real deal. When the seller gives you a nudge and a wink you are supposed to know you are not going to be getting a genuine item.

author: bills
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 03:29:43 am
content: yes you are right, for $12.00 I took a chance and lost (what crap) i WILL GET A REFUND as the shipper is less than 3 miles from me.

author: bills
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 03:33:10 am
content: BTW the 2 good ones are up to 400 mah. maybe only 10x as bad i thought

author: retiredcaps
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 03:40:01 am
content: Quote from: bills on March 15, 2015, 03:29:43 amA lot of the seller's negatives are due to battery complaints. Namely, they don't hold a charge or last very long. In addition, some of the negative feedback suggests the seller may be using drop shipping from China and not really located in the USA despite what the ebay listing says?http://toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=hot-rc&Dirn=Received+by&ref=home

author: Fsck
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 03:43:52 am
content: Quote from: retiredcaps on March 15, 2015, 03:15:59 amditto. never trust ebay cells, ever.

author: bills
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 05:02:50 am
content: all of my projects that have worked used Samsung cells , 2000 mah

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 09:49:33 am
content: Suffixing brands with "fire" is a common trait of 18650 branding. Perhaps the manufacturers hope we associate fire withlots of power!Regardless,Uranusfirehas to be my favourite name so far.Quote from: blueskull on March 15, 2015, 03:42:40 amEvery seller/manufacturer of Surefire and Ultrafire cells argues they are the original and the best. In practice I have found no easy way to determine if this is true or not: heat-shrink labels claiming a certain brand are so cheap that everyone uses them.At this price the cells you bought are definitely poor quality. Sadly decent 18650s cost a lot of money, as IanB pointed out. It's generally more effective to pull them out of "not-too-old" laptops at get them somewhere above half of original capacity unless you really need them to be high-end 3Ah jobs. EDIT: I should add that there is no such thing as a 4500mAh 18650 cell. The best that exists is still quite shy of even 4000 mAh, and more likely to be in the <3500 mAh range, but I'm a year out of date.Get your money back, but also learn the ways of battery sellers.

author: dexters_lab
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 01:45:40 pm
content: Quote from: bills on March 15, 2015, 02:35:41 amlol, yea fake ultrafire for sure, for one. ultrafire dont make batteries that capacity, in fact even the big japanese companies top out at about 3400mah for a 18650 so anything more than this is just bullshit

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 02:02:37 pm
content: 18650 batteries with such capacity do not exist. If you want real high capacity batteries, buy Panaconic NCR18650B, for example. Will cost $ 8-10 piece though. My friend bought such two times on aliexpress, after testing turned to be genuine regardless of being sourced from China. Tasting after 6 months did not reveal any significant capacity degradation too. BTW with one genuine battery, you would get more capacity at lower priceEdit, or newer NCR18650BFhttps://www.akkuteile.de/tpl/download/NCR-18650BF.pdfat lower price. Hopefully genuine:http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-NCR18650BF-NCR18650B-18650-Battery/dp/B00PEMH9HG/ref=sr_1_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1426428432&sr=1-5&keywords=NCR18650B

author: bills
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 08:08:25 pm
content: well after testing these junk batteries they have a 430mah capacity. what junk, they will be sent back as not as described.

author: HKJ
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2015, 08:25:16 pm
content: Quote from: dexters_lab on March 15, 2015, 01:45:40 pmYou are nearly correct. Panasonic has 3600mAh batteries, but they are difficult to get.You can compare a lot of 18650 batteries here:http://lygte-info.dk/review/batteries2012/Common18650comparator.php

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 16, 2015, 12:50:05 am
content: Quote from: Whales on March 15, 2015, 09:49:33 amLol, I thought you were kidding until I followed the link. That's hilarious.I can imagine an advertising slogan "Buy our batteries, they will set your ass on fire!"

author: dexters_lab
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 16, 2015, 11:01:52 am
content: Quote from: HKJ on March 15, 2015, 08:25:16 pmthanks for the tip & link

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 16, 2015, 03:29:28 pm
content: Quote from: rdl on March 16, 2015, 12:50:05 amThere's also SpiderFire, FandyFire, and FireWorm... and apparently some have gone as far as making fakes of *Fire, likeUitraFlrcandUltarFire.

author: Habropoda
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2015, 02:26:41 am
content: These batteries are probably the type of fakes that have smaller batteries inside with some kind of fill powder. Here is a recent discussion of one of these:http://budgetlightforum.com/node/38133Fake wrappers of all kinds are available. It is also common to rewrap old batteries from laptop packs.Most people are not battery experts (too say the least) and have no idea they are being cheated until too late. If you look at some of the Amazon reviews, some people are actually happy, mainly because they don't know a good battery from a hot dog. When I've disputed fakes through ebay's system I have gotten a refund with no need for return. Do not contact the seller directly or you will get a run around.

author: bills
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2015, 07:12:00 am
content: I took one apart they had some kind of disc that I assume is the protection circuit it reads 0.1 ohm .no doubt pure crap. (it did have the ultra fire logo on it ) like I said great 430 mah cells ,pure shit.

author: akis
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2015, 12:18:13 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on March 15, 2015, 03:42:40 amI would not use anything with "Fire" when advertising LiIon batteries!!!! Which bright spark came up with the idea? (excuse the pun)sellers on ebay sell chinese LiIons that even the makers in China have no idea what they are doing, for example they put together 3 cells of 3000mAh each, and then they claim 3 * 3000mAh = 9000mAh at 3 * 3.7V = 11.1V. No amount of explaining could convince them that these really are 3000mAh units.One thing you can do, if space allows, is to remove the "protection" circuitry. It is a piece of junk equipment that cuts out on its own accord whereas the cell, chemically, is fine.Before I get attacked by the PC/nanny state/big brother brigade - there are thousands of hobbyists using completely "naked" and very powerful LiIon cells, cells so powerful that they crank and start car engines with. They typically use them in model planes. The best place to buy from is Hobbyking. I have bought many times and only once I had a duff battery which they refunded.

author: eas
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2015, 09:28:02 pm
content: I've never used protected 18650's yet. I have a huge number of unprotected 18650s. The cost, between $0 and $3, plus a little bit of time. The source, cheap new-old-stock laptop batteries from ebay, or cheap/free used packs from a variety of sources, including recycling bins. I only bother with OEM packs.I've beendumping the smart battery data from the packs using some arduino software I hacked up. It gives me the pack manufacture date and the number of full charge/discharge cycles the pack has seen, the series voltage for the pack, and for some packs, the voltage of each parallel bank. Based on that, I decide whether it is worth spending 20 minutes tearing the pack apart. Or that is the plan.Right now, I've been tearing everything down for further testing. Any cell below ~2v gets pitched. What I've learned so far is that cells from new-old-stock packs tend to be pretty close to their original nominal capacity 4-5 years after manufacture. Many cells from used packs that are well into their useful cycle life still have 60-75% of original nominal capacity, enough to be useful for many applications. Moreover, the rate of decline for at least some such cells (Samsung ICR18650-28A) measured over 75+ charging cycles is modest, not a sharp cliff as I'd been led to believe. Also, lenovo packs seem to wear well while dell packs are crap. I've had a number of Dell packs with dead cells mixed with good cells in a bank, poor/broken welds, even reverse polarity cells, suggesting the protection circuits didn't do their job.Bottom line, if you just need 18650s, you can do much much better than crap ultra/trustfire cells for less $. If you need protection, you can get shrink-wrap and protection boards, but I don't know that it is worth the trouble, particularly since you should be spot-welding the leads. There are reputable dealers in the US of good quality cells at reasonable prices. Check BudgetLightForum.com for sellers and reviews.Oh, and by the way, LG has released some 3,500mAh cells. They are starting to show up in small quantities.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2015, 04:05:29 am
content: Quote from: eas on March 20, 2015, 09:28:02 pm...and this is likely how the *fire brands started up.

author: Tim F
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2015, 04:19:55 am
content: Quote from: bills on March 15, 2015, 08:08:25 pmThe best you will get out of that situation is sending them back at your own cost, which I guess is going to be a significant portion of $12 since you will have to send it registered/signature-on-delivery to prove that the items made it back to the seller (for a Paypal Dispute). For the sake of netting $5 or whatever, it probably isn't even worth the time/effort.When I feel i have been ripped off badly on ebay i try to claim that the item didn't arrive - that way i don't have to waste my own money/time packaging and sending useless junk back. Obviously some moral judgement is required here. If i had paid the going price for genuine cells and received fakes i would try to go down that route.The seller seems like the kind that sells all kinds of surplus stock or factory seconds from china and the item is priced low because of the unknown condition/quality/authenticity - it's unreasonable to expect good quality 4500mAH cells for $1.50 each. I would probably just take it on the chin...

author: bills
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2015, 06:27:28 am
content: I got a full refund and I get to keep (dispose) of the crap cells. BTW these are not protected cells as claimed.I could not leave feedback as I was refunded full price.Wow what crap, these could cause fires , and ruin equipment, I have been testing these shit tubes and they short when the voltage drops below 2 volts (dead short!) still average <400 mah per cell, only have 4 that still work, somewhat.I am afraid to put the bad ones in the trash might start a ultra-fire. I am going to send the bad ones back to them let them deal with it.

author: bills
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2015, 06:40:55 am
content: I have 30 samsung 2200 mah cells that I salvaged from used equipment that are from 2008 and work perfect.I only bought the ultra crap cells because I wanted some protected cells (big mistake) I am going to try some of these and see if I get better results.http://www.ebay.com/itm/181681937061?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT