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HP Recalls 6 Million Power Cables Over Fire Hazard
Via the Consumerist comes news that HP is recalling power cables after about 30 reports that they were melting from regular use. From the article:
Hewlett-Packard received 29 reports of the melting or charring power cords, two that included claims of minor burns and 13 claims of minor property damage.
The black power cords were distributed with HP and Compaq notebook and mini notebook computers and with AC adapter-powered accessories such as docking stations and have an "LS-15" molded mark on the AC adapter.
About 5.6 million power cords were sold in the United States, while 446,700 were sold in Canada from September 2010 to June 2012 at electronic stores and hp.com.
How do you fuck something like that up?
It's not just HP that uses the LS-15 style, Acer does too for their laptops. Incoming recall for 4-6 years worth of cables coming from Acer tomorrow then?
Om, nomnomnom...
HP = Horrible Product
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
Really, people who buy HP are worse than people who pay for porn. They're a shitty, outsourcing, cost-cutting, printer cartridge filling shell of an engineering company. If you think anything they build is good, legacy products excepted, it's because you're too stupid to see what's wrong with it.
And if you don't know anywhere which can do a better job, cheaper, you're too dull to deserve sufficient resources to allow you to choose a computer.
I am actually impressed that 20 failures from 6 million power cords leads to a recall. Seriously, I love the fact that we have building techniques that a failure rate that low is _completely_ unacceptable :)
Humanity really does kick serious arse sometimes.
...poisonous plastics, sub par materials and thus products. i can't blame them really. it's not the workers who really profit from outsourcing all of our production.
Do still not forget that 20 is the amount who happened to run into problems and bothered to file a proper complaint. It is a hint that there might be actually thousands of faulty cables.
A little 8-white-LED key chain flashlight, it's cheap and what a miracle it is. Anyone old enough to remember strapping on 2 lb lantern batteries for a couple of hours' light knows. Really bright, runs cool with and extremely low current draw. All Glory to the Human Race. And Hypnotoad.
1. flickered on the first day when I tapped it against something. Probably shelf life corrosion patina, took out batteries, cleaned them, ok.
2. flickering again. spring on screw end not made of spring steel, weak. stretched out spring.
3. flickering again. top contact in flashlight tube is flat bent strip of copper or brass, no spring behind it. installed tiny ball of foil on top of battery.
4. flickering again. top contact now recessed into soft plastic and contact is unreliable even with foil or spring shim. flashlight goes into drawer.
5. need for tiny always-on light. take hacksaw to cut off aluminum battery tube, to reach and solder wire from 1.5V adapter to top contact. drill small hole to attach screw for wire (cannot solder, too much heat dissipation). Works today. Light always on.
6. flickering again. this time it is failing spring on push button. place small clamp around button squeezing it down tight.
7. flickering again. this time it is two of the eight individual LEDs around the circle going out when tapped. clearly the fabrication method involved little or no solder.
8. at this point 'fixing' this little light would involve rendering it down to part level and rebuilding it. Had enough. I decide to leave the light as it is and change my life instead. I have joined an Amish community.
8. flickering again. this time it is a light murmuring breeze on leaves in a glade of dappled sunlight. tie off branches and sew leaves together with thread.
9. flickering again. this time it is my campfire. A rhinoceros appears and stamps the fire out.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm more inclined to think it's financial math. You can over-engineer a cable to last a thousand years, or make it cheaply enough that the failure rate is 'acceptable'.
All too easily it seems; my first MacBook Pro power lead caught fire a few years ago as well. This was the low-voltage (hence high current) end, though: in their quest to make everything thin and light, the cable was thin and flimsy, so one of the braided conductors frayed after a while. More current going down a thinner wire meant more heat - which softened the remaining copper and made the problem worse, until arcing started and I got a micro-firework display on my desk. (One of is successors managed to melt the plastic in the plug, that didn't make me happy either!)
On the mains end, even a hefty (for laptops) 300-odd watt PSU is only 3A from a US outlet, half that on the higher voltages elsewhere - usually easy enough to deal with, but one sloppy connection and you can get a tiny point getting very hot indeed. It's worse on the low voltage end: a single cable possibly carrying 20 or more amps, while getting rolled up, folded and stood on in transit, designed to be very light weight - yet also done on a budget. As soon as you start trying to shave weight and cost, I suspect it's all too easy for a wire to be just slightly too thin for the current, or a connection to be a little bit too weak for long term mobile use.
If you were building a high school or college electronics project and said you planned to run laptop currents and voltages through such thin wires and tiny connectors, you'd probably be told off or marked down - but commercially, thin, light and cheap trump safety margins and robustness.
No more details are known. Just that some cables catched fire. Maybe they examined one of the returned ones and found out that they were not manufactured to spec or maybe the contractor reduced safety margins to a point where they become potentially dangerous. I don't think any company wants to be responsible in case someone dies.
Better to collect all the cables before more bad publicity gets generated.
Plus (other comment) most just throw away a cable if it smells funny so actualy numbers are sort of a gray area.
I've been noticing this for several years now ... what the hell is up with URLs at HP?
It's like they've designed their website so nobody could ever actually find anything.
I mean "http://h30434.www3.hp.com/" is one of the most strangely formed URLs I've seen, what is it, the virtual host or something?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The Cheesy offering like Architectural 3D Flythrough, 3D Flythrough, 3D Bird View, 3D Arial View, 3D Flythrough Service.
Visit Us : http://www.thecheesyanimation.com/3D-Flythrough.html
It is a hint that there might be actually thousands of faulty cables.
No, its not, unless you have more info about how representative those 20 are.
Generally the ones who have problems are the "vocal minority": that is, if you have problems, you are more likely to speak up, so if you're only seeing 20 / 13million, it could well indicate that the problem is quite limited.
I had an HP 17" laptop about 10 years ago. If the unit was plugged into the wall, and I wasn't wearing shoes and the thing was on my lap, my feet would tingle, and not in a good way.
This was unlikely a grounding problem with the mains wiring, as I experienced this at more than one house in different neighborhoods.
I called HP and asked about it. They offered to replace the power supply at the generous price of $149.99 plus shipping. I asked about a guarantee that the replacement would be shock-free and they said they couldn't make any promises, that defects would be warrantied, but what I described was not a defect since the PS did in fact supply power. I declined the offer. Several months later (on the way to an out-of-town job interview no less) the PS died completely and I replaced it with an appropriately-rated off-brand (Belkin?) PS from a big-box store. That replacement didn't shock me, but it buzzed very very loudly.
I suspect that there was something wrong with the internal power system that was causing too much power to be drawn from the PS. Both the laptop and the external brick were always hot enough to cause pain when held for more than a few seconds. Denim pants were required to use the laptop on my actual lap.
When buying my next laptop, I looked for something with a different feature set.
the actual number could be much higher, but go undetected because the user isn't drawing enough current to expose the flaw. or maybe the user just says "damn, what a cruddy power cord" and just grabs another out of his collection.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
How many users of those power cables have right now them unknowingly slightly warming up somewhere under their desk? How many users just say "darn cable, did I break it already" and just chucked in a new one? How many users have a problem coming up in following months?
They can claim they are selling Firewire.
Give the cables were shipped between 2010 and 2012 it would be a damn good coincidence if people are going to have an issue coming up in the following months.
Hewlett-Pucktard
Buffer[9] = 'F';
whooooo!
So, were you going for Hewlett-PFcktard, or is your array index off by one? Or, do you use one of "those" languages where arrays are indexed starting at 1?
Snorted when i saw this post, couple months ago my sisters Compaq laptop power brick randomly caught fire and melted (It was unplugged and very lightly used), Did a quick Google search and found HP owns Compaq, Think this covers that?
Again: Without more information, all of this is wild speculation.
The world needs more facts, not more guessing.
I actually am. I wish I could see if my power cord had an LS-15 mark on it, but it's kinda melted. Oh well. I'm sure it's fine...
I really wish I was making this up - I called asking about bulk replacement for my organization, and the email address they gave me was not working. So tier 1 said they would "transfer me to the team in charge of the recall." Well, I was connected with Scott, the service manager of a Chevrolet Dealership in upstate New York. Besides a good laugh, he obviously wasn't able to help me very much. *sigh*
These are 6 million ways to die?
From cpsc.gov:
Customers should immediately stop using and unplug the recalled power cords and contact Hewlett-Packard to order a free replacement. Consumers can continue to use the computer on battery power.
I must say that I am very impressed by the fast shipping!
HP products melt and catch fire ALL THE TIME. How is this news? At my repair shop we have an average of 1 HP every 6 months light on fire.
Seems a tad hysterical.
They make some decent stainless steel woodworking rasps and other woodworking tools that require some hand-work.
Can't even make a fucking power cord right anymore.
I wouldn't call it wild speculation. I'd call that a likely scenario.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Up to 40,000 homes built in Australia after 2000 may have a similar problem with their wiring.
http://www.accc.gov.au/update/infinity-cables-frequently-asked-questions
Generally the ones who have problems are the "vocal minority": that is, if you have problems, you are more likely to speak up, so if you're only seeing 20 / 13million, it could well indicate that the problem is quite limited.
Sure, I'm one of those. I raised hell, on a Swedish electrical/electronics forum... Didn't even bother to call HP. I assumed it was a one off, and what are they going to do anyway? Tell me to send the cable to them? (That's too much of a hassle) and give me a new one? (I could just grab a new one from one of the conveniently situated piles at work).
In fact, the usual rule, born out by science, when it comes to customer satisfaction here in Sweden (originally talking about large enterprises like TV/Radio) is that for every complaint you have 4000 people who are dissatisfied but don't bother to make contact.
Now, of course, a recall could still be warranted even if there were only 20 out of 6 million, since there shouldn't be any at all. Compare the Challenger disaster. That the O-rings had only been eroded through a third of the way, didn't really mean that they had a safety factor of three, since they weren't supposed to erode at all! Likewise, these cables weren't supposed to melt either, and by a substantial safety margin at that. If as many as 20 do, that means that there is a systematic error somewhere.
Stefan Axelsson