Lenovo Recalls LS-15 Power Cords

jones_supa writes US Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that Lenovo is recalling a batch of laptop AC power cords due to fire hazard. The power cords have been bundled with IdeaPad brand B-, G-, S-, U-, V- and Z-series laptop computers and Lenovo brand B-, G- and V-series laptop computers. The recalled power cords are black in color and have the "LS-15" molded mark on the base of the IEC 60320 connector. The company seems to have been bitten by the exact same problem that HP faced this summer. Lenovo has set up an info page for affected customers.

Comments

Useless information

[Anonymous Coward]

The power cords are black?

Re:Useless information

[Anonymous Coward]

And there are about 30 connectors defined in IEC 60320. I think they mean the IEC 60320 C5 connector.

Re:Useless information

[SpzToid]

This is a U.S. 110 volt thing only, if that helps. Actually TFA has a pretty clear photo of what to look for and how to identify the cable.

Re:Useless information

[Anonymous Coward]

See, I knew I should have switched to Canadian 110 volt!

It's totally different.

I'm just glad I'm not on Mexican. That stuff will blow you up.

Re:Useless information

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a U.S. 110 volt thing only

Lenovo lists LS-15 power cords in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America etc. It's not "US only" thing: http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/powercord2014

Re:Useless information

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but then everything connected to your electricity has to use French.

Have you seen French light? They may call Paris the City of Lights, but it's about as appetizing as the Big Apple.

Re:Useless information

[jones_supa]

How is mentioning that it is a C5 connector useful information, but black color is useless information?

Re:Useless information

[WillKemp]

Yeah, i was just checking the cable from an S20-30 laptop bought a couple of days ago (in Australia). It has "LS-15" on the connector, but a different cable type from the photo - a bundled cable with double insulation (which is standard here), rather than 3 single-insulated parallel wires.

Re:Useless information

[Anonymous Coward]

Lenovo lists LS-15 power cords in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America etc. It's not "US only" thing: http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/powercord2014

In places that uses 230V the current through the cable will be half that of those that uses 110V so even if it is sold there the fire hazard doesn't occur unless you bring it to a 110V country.

Europe is exclusively 230V, most of Asia with the exception of Korea and Japan is 230V. Africa is mostly 230V with the exception of Madagascar. Southern south America is 230V.
So while it is a bit narrow to say that is limited to the US 110V isn't used that much outside North America and a few nations with very close ties to the US.

Re:Useless information

[Barsteward]

Not necessarily, plenty of different power cords are played by white boys and girls :)

Re:Useless information

[TWX]

You mean you don't like that jaundice-yellow color cast by Sodium-vapour lamps?

When I was in Paris I found it to be dirty and in dis-repair, even in the supposedly fashionable Montparnasse neighborhood where we stayed. There was a whole lot of road construction and building fascade construction going on, making getting around difficult, and the architecture was postwar poured conrete more than anything else.

And all the shops closed by 7pm.

.__.

[iamwhoiamtoday]

and here I was, all happy and shit from having deployed a few hundred of those laptops in record time / efficiency. Thanks.

Re:.__.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Sounds like you got burned...

Re:.__.

[jones_supa]

Well, they manufactured a few million of those power cords in record time / efficiency too, so you shouldn't beat up yourself too much by just following the tradition. :)

Re:.__.

[WillKemp]

It only applies to cords sold in 2011 & 12 http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/powercord2014

Re:.__.

[Anonymous Coward]

(In all honesty, I've done PC rollouts, and I feel your pain. Hopefully the fact that AC cords don't (yet) have drivers will make mitigation less painful than it might be, and I wish you luck. Couldn't resist that one, though.)

Re:.__.

[TWX]

Apparently the cords will indeed resist... That's the problem.

Whew.

[msauve]

I have an LS-16.

Re:Whew.

[Phil Karn]

"National Security" is the root password to the Constitution - me

Re:Whew.

[Anonymous Coward]

well that's on better ... isn't it. The little extra to put you over the top.

should go back further

[Anonymous Coward]

I had 2 Thinkpad adaptor replacements because of their bad cords back in 2000. It stopped when I started using a Dell replacement adaptor, but the best replacement that didn't keep breaking was laptops that weren't branded Thinkpads.

Why?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I confess to being a bit baffled at how these power cord defects keep happening. Your basic AC power cord is ancient by the standards of electronic gizmos and by far the simplest thing going into a modern laptop. Does that simplicity attract a tendency to live dangerously with the low bidder? Is strain relief just ugly enough that people who don't know better keep trying to cut it out of the design?

Re:Why?

[msauve]

CCC = Cheap Chinese Crap.

China seems to be like 1950's Japan - some signs of innovation and quality, but mostly tin toys.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I confess to being a bit baffled at how these power cord defects keep happening. Your basic AC power cord is ancient by the standards of electronic gizmos and by far the simplest thing going into a modern laptop. Does that simplicity attract a tendency to live dangerously with the low bidder? Is strain relief just ugly enough that people who don't know better keep trying to cut it out of the design?

That sounds about right.
I'm guessing the manufacturer skimped on the copper wire to save money and that's why these cords are overheating. There could also be an issue with the insulation between the wires, but that wouldn't seem to be as much about cost savings as negligent QC.

Re:Why?

[freeze128]

I think it's the same reason why car manufacturers have safety recalls over seat belt latches and ignition switches. They are both very simple technology that has been done right over the years, but their stockholders insist that the companies "innovate" to maximize profits. This constant innovation means redesigning the wheel over and over again until it doesn't work right. GM could statistically determine which design of their seat belt latches had the fewest failures, and then just continue to use that design in all of their vehicles. This would make consumers and regulators very happy, but then anyone who had a seat belt damaged could just get one from the junkyard from a 20 year old model instead of buying a new one from the GM parts depot.

This is why we have power cords with the mickey mouse ears design on laptop power supplies instead of the industry standard that is in use on ALL desktops.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

You get what you pay for. There's no excuse to being so cheap on a laptop power cord. Just like there is no excuse to use the worst capacitors possible on video cards and yet it keeps happening.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

1950s Japan had one big difference, culturally they weren't out to fuck everyone (eachother included) over. Chinese culture and Japanese culture play a big part in how their industrialization has differed.

Re:Why?

[thegarbz]

No China shows a slightly different pattern. Even in 1950s Japan wasn't a simple outsourcer with no local products. They were local producers with local products sold internationally. The only problem is the products were crap. China on the other hand produces very little in the way of local stuff. Much of the engineering is not done in China, much of the design is not done in China, much of what is done in China is simply copied from other international manufacturers like Cisco.

The difference is in Japan nearly all products were poor at the time. China on the other hand the products can be as good as you're willing to pay for. You want a $0.50 power cord with no quality control, with no list of chemicals that went into the plastic manufacture? We got that. You want a beautifully milled piece of aluminium with incredibly tight tolerances? We got that too. You want a highly precisely machined piece of optical glass for a telescope? Yep got that too complete with test certificate, but that will cost you.

China doesn't produce cheap crap. China just produces. The West places orders for cheap crap and then cry about it when something doesn't go quite right.

Re:Why?

[Gordo_1]

I know it's a feel good story and all to bash Capitalist car manufacturers and all, and there are probably some examples where what you're saying is true, but GM seatbelts are pretty standard across all models and get small updates about once a decade. Defects are very rare in this area. Notice that when stuff gets recalled, it's usually recalled against many models over a number of years... That's not the hallmark of things getting updated just for the sake of it. It's also inevitably expensive for the manufacturer to create new parts where none is needed and existing parts are already in the parts bin.

Important stuff generally gets updated when new functionality is needed (like ignition disabling circuitry to make cars harder to steal). It's not like there's a group of Engineers sitting around thinking of ways to redesign basic things that work. They won't win new customers by redesigning seat-belts and ignition switches.

Re:Why?

[kinko]

I confess to being a bit baffled at how these power cord defects keep happening. Your basic AC power cord is ancient by the standards of electronic gizmos and by far the simplest thing going into a modern laptop.

recently we had a power cord melt and nearly start a fire in our server room while power maintenance was occurring (so power was only going to 1 PSU instead of both PSUs). Turns out the cables don't meet the appropriate standards (IEC 60950) despite being stamped with "10A".

The cross-section of the copper strands in the failed cable was smaller than that of a 'proper' cable. These cables were illegal, but are being imported from cheap manufacturers in China (obviously without testing to Western standards) and being sold at somewhat reputable stores. Beware of cables marked "PVC YOUZHI DIANXIAN 3x0.75mm2" :)

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

You used a power cord clearly marked .75mm^2, to power a server rack! Ouch! I bet you'll read the markings on the cord next time.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I confess to being a bit baffled at how these power cord defects keep happening. Your basic AC power cord is ancient by the standards of electronic gizmos and by far the simplest thing going into a modern laptop. Does that simplicity attract a tendency to live dangerously with the low bidder? Is strain relief just ugly enough that people who don't know better keep trying to cut it out of the design?

My guess is that it has more to do with Lenovo designing things in China now. With China being 230V and their largest market outside of China being 230V it the one specifying what cable to use might overlook that some countries uses 110V, it's such a small detail after all.
With any luck they will remember it next time.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ehh, depends, China has a culture of producing cheap crap. Many western companies end up sending loads of western QA to Chinese factories because many workers assume that the customer care about cost over quality. They absolutely can make your expensive high quality item, but it can take some effort to tell them you really do want to spend more to get exactly what you asked for.

Re:Why?

[drinkypoo]

China doesn't produce cheap crap. China just produces. The West places orders for cheap crap and then cry about it when something doesn't go quite right.

Oh? Is that why the great capacitor scandal went down in China?

The fact is that China does produce cheap crap. Anything they make "themselves" is a faithful copy of someone else's product, right down to the flaws. That tendency was noted when they first began manufacturing for the rest of us. They were copying machine tools, including the boneheaded mistakes. Problem is, they also use inferior materials for these cheap copies, so they wear rapidly and fail. The only bright spot is that you can use the replacement parts from the original, which are of much higher quality.

As well, people who attempt to have things made in China often find that they come back under spec. Sometimes this is true even in the demo parts, but the quality often slips at a later date and if you're not continually inspecting parts, the quality can go downhill without warning. This is why only big corporations can afford to sell stuff made in China year after year, they can eat the losses and they have learned which suppliers will try to screw them, and how hard. It's also why you pay twice as much for the same shit made in the same place if you buy it off a shelf instead of off of eBay. The product may well be shit, in fact it is highly likely, and the corporation has to handle the cost of processing the returns and landfilling the garbage product.

Can this happen with parts coming out of any nation? Sure. But China is known for it. It's well-known that you can't simply contract them for parts of any complexity and then wait for them to arrive, they will arrive with obvious spec violations and you will pay for the privilege.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL you just proved his point, you're one of the cheap fucks that can only afford cheap crap from China.

You cheap fucks kept complaining and kept going back for more, and you'd never talk about the real world leading advance stuff in China because they're all out of your price range.

Re:Why?

[petermgreen]

I don't see anything in his post saying he was dumb enough to try and power the whole rack with such a power cord.

In my experiance (living in the UK) most IEC cords are 0.75mm. 0.75mm flex is supposed to be good for 6A (and is probablly in practice good for substantially more, the current ratings on the small flex sizes are very conservative). That should be sufficient for most servers.

I do find it very misleading that the moulded IEC connectors seem to always be stamped with 10A even when connected to 0.75mm flex but if his flex melted either it was a very big server or the 0.75mm printed on the flex was a lie.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

> China ... products can be as good as you're willing to pay for.

Or the company -- or some guy in the mail room -- will substitute one grade lower quality and pocket the difference. If that works, hey, why not send two grades lower quality with the next larger order? Establish trust, then screw up in a profitable way. They've learned how to do capitalism from the masters.

"Trust, but verify."

Re:Why?

[tlhIngan]

China doesn't produce cheap crap. China just produces. The West places orders for cheap crap and then cry about it when something doesn't go quite right.

Oh? Is that why the great capacitor scandal went down in China?

The fact is that China does produce cheap crap. Anything they make "themselves" is a faithful copy of someone else's product, right down to the flaws. That tendency was noted when they first began manufacturing for the rest of us. They were copying machine tools, including the boneheaded mistakes. Problem is, they also use inferior materials for these cheap copies, so they wear rapidly and fail. The only bright spot is that you can use the replacement parts from the original, which are of much higher quality.

As well, people who attempt to have things made in China often find that they come back under spec. Sometimes this is true even in the demo parts, but the quality often slips at a later date and if you're not continually inspecting parts, the quality can go downhill without warning. This is why only big corporations can afford to sell stuff made in China year after year, they can eat the losses and they have learned which suppliers will try to screw them, and how hard. It's also why you pay twice as much for the same shit made in the same place if you buy it off a shelf instead of off of eBay. The product may well be shit, in fact it is highly likely, and the corporation has to handle the cost of processing the returns and landfilling the garbage product.

Can this happen with parts coming out of any nation? Sure. But China is known for it. It's well-known that you can't simply contract them for parts of any complexity and then wait for them to arrive, they will arrive with obvious spec violations and you will pay for the privilege.

The OP's point is that China produces to the quality you specify. If you're willing to pay for it, they can produce very high quality goods (see Apple). If not, they can produce to your price point.

And that includes crap they copy. Because the copied crap must sell for less and most Chinese (who are VERY well versed in basic economics) know that to maximize profits, you minimize cost, means they will cut every corner possible because a penny saved is a penny more in profit.

So no, they're not going to pay for Apple-level quality, or even the cheapest western brand-name level quality. They want even cheaper than that, and basically pay not a penny more.

Of course, the product does often end up as crap because it's shoddily made and barely has more structural integrity than the box it came in.

I mean, if you're willing to buy an Apple for $2000, and it costs Apple say, $1000 to make, if they can make a copy for $200, that's $1800 in pure profit - 80% more than Apple! Of course, there's a reason why Apple spent so much, so your Chinese Apple clone would be a deathtrap. But it'll be made, somehow because hell, if Apple can do it, so can they.

(And you have to know the value system is based on how hard something is to copy. Software is worthless because it's easily copied (open-source even more so, but try getting the source code from them!)), etc.

Re:Why?

[steelfood]

obviously without testing to Western standards

That's actually not fair. There's a good chance the supplier mixed in some bad cables with good ones. The percentage of bad cables could be small (10% or less). In which case, it may not come out even with the most rigorous of testing, unless every unit shipped out was tested.

Here, nobody'd ever do such a thing because the backlash (fines, public perception, etc.) would put the entire company out of business. In China, even such a small increase in profit is worth it because they can pocket the difference and start up a whole new company afterwards.

The lack of corporate accountability is the real issue here, not the lack of testing.

Re:Why?

[thegarbz]

Oh? Is that why the great capacitor scandal went down in China?

Yes. Take a look at the exposure, motherboard vendors, lots of them. Selling raw electronics for the lowest cost. Limited margins, few possibilities for markups, and chasing the absolute cheapest product to maximise profits.

In the mean time China produced thousands of different electronics during that period but a lot of others were not affected at all.

Anything they make "themselves" is a faithful copy of someone else's product, right down to the flaws.

What you are saying is a direct extension of my point. The Chinese on the whole are poor. Electronics are made to the price people can afford. That's no secret. The Chinese wealthy don't have a problem buying made in China, but don't buy produced, designed, engineered, made, QCed, and sold in China because there are pretty much no premium brands that sell quality goods... no one would buy them.

As well, people who attempt to have things made in China often find that they come back under spec.

Like Apple, Celestron, Nikon, all known for poor quality products right? No. Quality control is what you pay for. You don't want to pay you don't get quality control. You do want to pay you do get quality control. It's really that simple.

But China is known for it. It's well-known that you can't simply contract them for parts of any complexity and then wait for them to arrive, they will arrive with obvious spec violations and you will pay for the privilege.

Funny. I can say the same about any company. Literally any company. High quality USA Emerson products ordered with custom metallurgy on the wetted parts and it arrived with an obvious spec violation. Carbon steel doesn't even look like C-276. I work in a place where we are required to PMI everything, send of things to independent labs for verification to local standards, and even trace individual heat numbers of metal. I have found zero pattern between who is good at quality control and who is bad, not when ordering a $10 part, or when ordering a $10000 part.

Further to that, any company which doesn't push the boundary for how poor a product they can make for a price is simply not squeezing profits hard enough. That's another thing about where I work. We strive to make the poorest quality product that will pass the local standards, as do all our competitors. Every so often it bites us, but for the most part we'd be out of business if we didn't.

Australia too

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.recalls.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/1066502

Re:Australia too

[WillKemp]

But only cords supplied in 2011/12 http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/powercord2014

a non news

[Champaklal]

Really Lenovo, is it that complicated to make a proper adapter?

Re:a non news

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah the young uns... reading isn't really their forte.

Re:a non news

[sound vision]

In 2012 I was working on a contract from Lenovo where their PSUs were catching fire, too. We had to switch out thousands of them, in the field across several sites. The owners had a service contract stipulating on-site service (and not enough spare PCs to keep the operation going while they ship them out for repair).

It does not say good things about their quality control.

if you work in computer repair...

[slashmydots]

If you work in computer repair then you're thinking what I am. The LS-15 HP (and lenovo) power supplies light on fire...and everything else HP makes. I bet their ink cartridges spontaneously combust. I've had 5 HPs light on fire at my shop in 2 years.

Material Science.

[thegarbz]

Your basic AC power cord is ancient by the standards of electronic gizmos and by far the simplest thing going into a modern laptop.

Simple is it? How many different countries around the world use how many different plugs? How many different standards do they need to be manufactured to? How many different power loads, how much over-design, which chemicals need to be used, and what design needs to be applied?

A power cord is simple device to look at. Producing power cords for a wide variety of countries to meet a wide variety of standards is not so easy. Then there's the quality control issue. Some 40000 houses in Australia need to be rewired due to the recent use of a powercord by a specific company which failed to meet Australian standards due to a specific component missing the plastic insulation. This same manufacturer has produced power cords for the local market for years and has other product lines that didn't have this problem.

The issue is there is no single power cord, there's only a standard, one for each country, and it's up to a designer to design and specify all components of this in order to meet the standards.

Re:Material Science.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, according to their recall validation website posted in the summary, there are numerous plugs from different countries that are affected (list below). You're right, it's not simple when you manage to screw up so many different cables with different plugs.

Central Europe and Asia
Africa
Japan
Taiwan
Australia/New Zealand/Fiji
South Korea
Italy
India
United Kingdom, Europe and Asia
United States and Asia
Israel
Brazil
Switzerland
Denmark
Argentina
China

Re:Material Science.

[Firethorn]

Some 40000 houses in Australia need to be rewired due to the recent use of a powercord by a specific company which failed to meet Australian standards due to a specific component missing the plastic insulation.

Sounds odd. Here in the USA 'power cord' implies what's being recalled, and 'rewired' implies replacing the wiring in a home. Was it some variation of Non-metallic building wire?

Is this the incident?
FTA: "While good-quality cable will last decades (up to 40 years) the Infinity brand is said to become brittle after 5 years, potentially exposing live conductors, creating the risk of fire and or electrocution."

1. I hope your guy's cable lasts more than 40 years. I had wiring much older than that in my last house, and my current is getting up there.
2. It doesn't say it was missing the insulation, the insulation was improperly chosen such that it'd break down early. Much harder to see.

Re:Material Science.

[Firethorn]

While there's a number of different plugs, all this stuff is modular today. Since the cables need to be rated from 100V-240V(plus safety margin) for a constant wattage draw due to universal power supplies, they can use the same cable for all of them.

Then you just contract for the appropriate number of plugs for the various standards, of the appropriate amperage capacity, all with the same wire-side interface.

You screw that interface up, and it's the most logical spot, you're going to screw a lot of cables for a lot of different companies up.

Re:Material Science.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your basic AC power cord is ancient by the standards of electronic gizmos and by far the simplest thing going into a modern laptop.

Simple is it?

Yes - 2 plugs with up to 3 pins, wires inbetween.

How many different countries around the world use how many different plugs?

What an odd question... how many countries that are different have plugs that are different from each other... Not sure, but I think there are a couple of countries that have two different plug standards.
I think you were asking how many different power plugs are there in the world, and I dont know, but it are quite a few - go count them if you want. Fact is, the plug is used to provide a connection between the pins in a wall socket to wires on the other side. These wires carry electricity - really not that complex. Just because the there are other countries that have a socket that looks different, does not mean that it works differently.

How many different standards do they need to be manufactured to?

Usually the one - unless it is one of those countries that have two different sockets, whereby they would have two specifications.

How many different power loads,

pretty much two - almost everywhere uses 110V 60hz or 230V 50Hz. there are slight variations, and a few countries that use oddball voltages, but it still all between 100V and 250V

how much over-design,

Not much to think about. Make a cable that can handle more than the maximum loads required and it will support those below.

which chemicals need to be used, and what design needs to be applied?

I'm reasonably sure that there are a lot of countries that will have these specifications written down. Find what exceeds the most stringent countries specification, and again you will have no issues for the rest.

A power cord is simple device to look at. Producing power cords for a wide variety of countries to meet a wide variety of standards is not so easy.

I disagree. You have two choices - you can make a separate cable for each country, and have them QC to each countries specifications (or *gasp* buy locally and support local business), or you make a cable for everywhere that will exceed the highest requirements of everywhere, and get it checked in every country.

Then there's the quality control issue. Some 40000 houses in Australia need to be rewired due to the recent use of a powercord by a specific company which failed to meet Australian standards due to a specific component missing the plastic insulation.

I heard about that, Infinity cable. ACCC made major wholesalers/retailers do recalls. Unfortunately electricians and builders bought and installed it in houses for while before any flags were raised, and it still took time before recalls were actually made. link: Sydney Morning Herald

This same manufacturer has produced power cords for the local market for years and has other product lines that didn't have this problem.

What? Where does this come from? Is there some other similar case I haven't heard about?
The only case like this in Australia that I know of involved INFINITY CABLE CO. PTY LTD. They imported 4000km of cable from china and sold it to everyone. They did not make it. They bought cheap wire from another country and sold it for a profit. They opened late 2009, sold the wire in 2010, found out, taken to court and went into liquidation in 2013. Hardly a long-term record.

The issue is there is no single power cord, there's only a standard, one for each country, and it's up to a designer to design and specify all components of this

Re:Material Science.

[thegarbz]

Yeah sorry for the incorrect use of the term powercord. It was Infinity's TPS, only the 2.5mm^2 stuff was affected.

I never said it was missing insulation. I said a component was missing in the plastic insulation. In this case it was a PVC which was missing an additive that provides thermal resistivity. Australian ceiling spaces can get in excess of 50degC in summer and that caused rapid breakdown of the Infinity cable. There's been a massive recall with a couple of vendors having to foot the bill for an electrician to re-wire houses.

But my point was it's quite easy enough to stuff up something which could be considered as "basic" as an electrical cable.

At one point we were worried enough about a set of cables we bought at work (industrial plant) which were orange and turned yellow in the sun that we sent the insulation off to a lab to be independently tested. It came back with a tick of approval but here's a vendor's cable which passed all the rules and met all the standards yet for some reason the cable changes colour when exposed to UV whereas another vendor's cable simply fades.

A lot more goes into a cable than a piece of metal surrounded by a piece of plastic.

Re:Material Science.

[Firethorn]

I said a component was missing in the plastic insulation.

Reread your own post. You missed the 'in' - "due to a specific component missing the plastic insulation."

It changes the meaning quite a bit, which caused me to wonder how the hell the installers didn't notice that something was missing insulation, as well as wondering if it was something special due to calling it a power cord(which here is basically 'modular non-permanent electrical cord intended to power a device).

At one point I was wondering if it was a component being used to hook up generators or something.

Re:Material Science.

[thegarbz]

lol, sorry.

So they put thick heavy cord...

[Anonymous Coward]

...with huge-ass grounded plug for an SMPS appliance that takes 60W tops and *still* manage to underspec it. Whoa.

My desk light taking the same 60W (an old one, with incandescent bulb) lacks grounding, has a cable that's about half as thick as those from laptops, and it's been working for years.

How can you screw up a power cord?

[Anonymous Coward]

How in hell can you screw up a power cord. The copper wire has to be a certain diameter to carry the correct amount of current. Given a certain length, it has to have a larger diameter for a longer length to compensate for i squared r loss. Then you have to have a certain diameter of plastic/rubber around it to insulate it from the other wire and anything else. Usually you give a larger than needed diameter so that it is safe against pulling/bending etc. Its not hard to get right.

Re:How can you screw up a power cord?

[jones_supa]

How in hell can you screw up a power cord. The copper wire has to be a certain diameter to carry the correct amount of current.

You just answered your own question. It is about engineering to the absolute minimum. 0.5 mm^2 wire will theoretically carry enough power to satisfy the laptop, but once the cord gets some beating, the copper strands get worn and the resistance increases...making things toasty.

Re:How can you screw up a power cord?

[Firethorn]

I'm guessing it's not the wire. I'd guess it's the connection to the plug.
They probably:
Didn't use the right solder
Didn't use enough solder
Didn't use adequate lead-in.

This results in a connection that gets a little too warm, the solder melts/softens and tends to migrate a bit, the connection comes loose, and a marginal connection creates a point of resistance that creates a LOT of heat, potentially fire.

Re:How can you screw up a power cord?

[WillKemp]

Well, you're guessing wrong. It's the insulation in the plug itself, which can degrade. http://www.recalls.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/1066502

Re:How can you screw up a power cord?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing it's not the wire. I'd guess it's the connection to the plug.
They probably:
Didn't use the right solder
Didn't use enough solder
Didn't use adequate lead-in.

This results in a connection that gets a little too warm, the solder melts/softens and tends to migrate a bit, the connection comes loose, and a marginal connection creates a point of resistance that creates a LOT of heat, potentially fire.

Say what? You think these cords have solder in them?

Re:How can you screw up a power cord?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are following the standard that the power cord is based on, you are not allowed to engineer anything. The engineering is already done, you simply follow the standard.

Re:How can you screw up a power cord?

[Phil Karn]

It's a little hard to believe it's insulation degradation despite that .au recalls website entry. When insulation degrades, you tend to get short circuits that trip circuit breakers rather rapidly. It seems more likely to be an undersized or underprotected conductor, e.g., a multistrand conductor in which flexing from improper strain relief can break most of the strands, increasing the local series resistance and heat dissipation and possibly leading to a complete conductor failure with series arcing. Only an arc-fault protector would trip on a failure like this, and those breakers are still uncommon in the US even though they're required in much new construction. It would also seem that cord failures would be more likely in North America, Japan and other 100-120V countries because a universal switching supply producing a given amount of power will require twice the line current draw and produce 4x the heat dissipation (I^2 R) in a high resistance section of cord as it would in a country with a 230-240V supply voltage.

Re:How can you screw up a power cord?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd guess wrong.

The problem is the metal "cans" that go over the male pins in the clover socket only overlap a millimeter or two. When the plug is flexed in the socket it can back out a little, causing an arc, which causes heat, which causes smoke, which causes recalls. Massive QC fail by one manufacturer, there will likely be more manufacturers that fall to this.

Source; I work for one of them.

Re:How can you screw up a power cord?

[fhage]

From the supporting douuments;

"What are the product defects?: Inconsistent combining of flame retardant compounds in plug of power cord. Details: Red Phosphorus has been used as a “green” flame retardant in mold compounds; it is known to cause certain failure modes if it is improperly processed:

Red phosphorus is used as a charring-promoter flame retardant. It is normally coated with aluminum hydroxide and selected/screened for particle size. If the coating is incomplete or absent, the phosphorus particles oxidize to the highly hygroscopic phosphorus pentoxide (P2O5), which reacts with atmospheric moisture to form phosphoric acid (H3PO4). This acid breaks down overmold leading to cracking along mold stress lines and further moisture incursion. This acid is a corrosive electrolyte that in the presence of electric fields facilitates dissolution and migration of metal.

Once a high impedance metal connection is made current will flow and localized heating will result. Metal migration will continue until a catastrophic event occurs. Higher voltage accelerates the failure mode, so countries with higher voltage, like China and others, would more likely see the failure first, and possibly in a higher number.

Cracks in epoxy and red phosphorous crystal formation indicates red phosphorous – also noted throughout the material -- as source of failure in the Huachen housing."

In short, because of poor QA mixing the "green" flame retardant, the plug's insulation forms an acid in the presence of moisture and degrades the metals it surrounds. In this case, higher voltage accelerates the failure mode, not the higher currents in 110V countries.

Re:How can you screw up a power cord?

[Firethorn]

Thanks for the information. I tried finding more on the failure modes, but didn't see a link to the exact problem.

One of the biggest issues is knock-off batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

While there are a tiny fraction of Dells and HPs (not to mention Apple had at least one flaming MacBook recall just last year) that fail and burn, the vast majority of the real issues seem to occur due to cheap knock-off batteries. And if you've had "5 HPs light on fire" in your shop, you're clearly either doing something exceptionally wrong, or you work on thousands of HP products (and likely a smaller number of other brands). As illustrated by this very FA, most of these problems tend to hit multiple brands. The same was true of the dying NVIDIA chips in laptops several years ago. It affected pretty much everyone, including Apple, but HP took much of the flack because they happened to have the highest market share among affected products.

That's not to say HP is without problems, heck their last few CEOs have been absolute disasters, but I think they're actually turning toward the right direction these days and investing back in meaningful R&D and support which should produce positive changes if they don't screw it up by firing yet another CEO and bringing in another hatchet man/woman to "increase efficiency" and drive up short-term profits at the expense of long-term viability so they can jump out of the plane with their golden parachutes.

Found this by accident a few months ago

[POPE Mad Mitch]

Well that explains a lot, a few months ago I discovered that my laptop had started to trip the mains when i took it into the office which had a more modern fuse box than at home. Figured out through trial and error that it was the cable from the wall to the psu, and application of a multimeter showed a measurably small resistance between live and earth when the cable was disconnected. I put it down to wear and tear, chucked it away and bought a replacement. Sounds like i was lucky to spot it early before it caused a fire, as that cable was usually left plugged in at home.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

HP had the same problem. So some subcontractor had a lot of inventory they could no longer sell to HP. Guess what they did. . .

HPhad similar recall

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me these types of recalls could be avoided if PC makers stopped skimping on quality of adaptor? I bought a new HP notebook the other day and the cord between the notebook and adaptor was so stiff and non flexible. Of course HP wont do nothing much about it because its not defective? Guess I will wait until the tension breaks the connector and get a warranty repair. But when the electrical plug melts on a minor amp draw for a notebook. You know stuff is not made well.