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Lenovo Recalls LS-15 Power Cords

Posted by samzenpus on from the take-it-back dept.

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.

41 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. .__. by iamwhoiamtoday · · Score: 1

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

    1. Re:.__. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Funny

      Sounds like you got burned...

    2. Re:.__. by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      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. :)

    3. Re:.__. by WillKemp · · Score: 1

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

    4. Re:.__. by TWX · · Score: 1

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

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  2. Re:Useless information by SpzToid · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
  3. Why? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Why? by msauve · · Score: 2

      CCC = Cheap Chinese Crap.

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

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    2. Re:Why? by freeze128 · · Score: 1

      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.

    3. Re:Why? by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Why? by Gordo_1 · · Score: 2

      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.

    5. Re:Why? by kinko · · Score: 4, Informative

      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" :)

    6. Re:Why? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:Why? by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    8. Re:Why? by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      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.

    9. Re:Why? by steelfood · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
    10. Re:Why? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      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.

  4. a non news by Champaklal · · Score: 1

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

    1. Re:a non news by sound+vision · · Score: 1

      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.

  5. Re:Useless information by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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.

  6. if you work in computer repair... by slashmydots · · Score: 1

    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.

  7. Material Science. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    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.

    1. Re:Material Science. by Firethorn · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      I don't read AC A human right
    2. Re:Material Science. by Firethorn · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      I don't read AC A human right
    3. Re:Material Science. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      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.

    4. Re:Material Science. by Firethorn · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      I don't read AC A human right
    5. Re:Material Science. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      lol, sorry.

  8. Re:How can you screw up a power cord? by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    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.

  9. Re:Useless information by jones_supa · · Score: 1

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

  10. Re:How can you screw up a power cord? by Firethorn · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    I don't read AC A human right
  11. Re:Useless information by WillKemp · · Score: 1

    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.

  12. Re:Australia too by WillKemp · · Score: 1

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

  13. Re:How can you screw up a power cord? by WillKemp · · Score: 1

    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

  14. Found this by accident a few months ago by POPE+Mad+Mitch · · Score: 2

    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.

  15. Re:How can you screw up a power cord? by Phil+Karn · · Score: 1

    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.

  16. Re:Whew. by Phil+Karn · · Score: 1

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

  17. Re:Useless information by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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.

  18. Re:Useless information by Barsteward · · Score: 1

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

    --
    "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
  19. Re:How can you screw up a power cord? by fhage · · Score: 1
    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.

  20. Re:How can you screw up a power cord? by Firethorn · · Score: 1

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

    --
    I don't read AC A human right
  21. Re:Useless information by TWX · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.