EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)

[EEVblog]

Anyhow, the sleeve is unlikely to do anything except act as a conductor from the positive to negative terminal through the boost converter.

And act as a heatsink.

[ozwolf]

Hello everyone! 

(my first post!)

I'm not much of an EE any more but I dabbled a bit when I was younger and have always liked tinkering with stuff, and I really enjoy watching Dave's videos!

Anyway, I have been following the batteriser shenanigans closely and have a some thoughts I wanted to share.  Having worked in electronics retail I can already see device manufacturers stance on batteriser if it ever gets released - they will not offer any warranty or accept refunds/exchanges on products that exhibit "faulty" battery reporting.  And customers are going to get angry.  Why do I think this?  Lets take their Mac Bluetooth keyboard in the promotional video as an example.  How long do you think Apple will tolerate "the battery guage is faulty" claims from customer? especially if it goes 100% (with the boost converter) to 0 and turns off with no in-between?

It will not take long for manufactures to issue "warranty void if used with batteriser" claims on products that have battery monitoring functionality....and 99.9% of customers will genuinely believe the product IS faulty as it will exhibit unusual behaviour.  Retails will notice the uptake in returns / exchanges very quickly.  I expect that itself will lead to some product verification, testing and then withdrawal from retail stores first, with manufactures following shortly after.  If batteriser sales really take off, this could actually lead to inflation of prices as manufacturers perceive lower yields and higher losses due to returns.

It will be chaos

Sorry if i'm not adding much to the discussions,
G

Not bad for your first post.

I think your comments are valid, and will wait to see the long term outcome of Batteriser use on well designed products.

The parallel here is the use of fuel additives to our cars.  If we add something to our fuel, and damage the engine, you can't expect the manufacturer to honour their warranty.

Ozwolf

[EEVblog]

What is interesting is that the Indiegogo campaign has been funded for almost two months now, but not a single update on actual production issues, which if you look at their timeline is supposed to start the same time as the campaign.
And they were supposed to have all the tooling done before the campaign even started.

[g.lewarne]

Not bad for your first post.

I think your comments are valid, and will wait to see the long term outcome of Batteriser use on well designed products.

The parallel here is the use of fuel additives to our cars.  If we add something to our fuel, and damage the engine, you can't expect the manufacturer to honour their warranty.

Ozwolf

Of course my comment is only valid if it ever makes it to retail sales....which is doubtful at best

[Don Hills]

And act as a heatsink.

Not a very good one, if it's made of stainless steel.

[ccs46]

Hello everyone! 

(my first post!)

I'm not much of an EE any more but I dabbled a bit when I was younger and have always liked tinkering with stuff, and I really enjoy watching Dave's videos!

Anyway, I have been following the batteriser shenanigans closely and have a some thoughts I wanted to share.  Having worked in electronics retail I can already see device manufacturers stance on batteriser if it ever gets released - they will not offer any warranty or accept refunds/exchanges on products that exhibit "faulty" battery reporting.  And customers are going to get angry.  Why do I think this?  Lets take their Mac Bluetooth keyboard in the promotional video as an example.  How long do you think Apple will tolerate "the battery guage is faulty" claims from customer? especially if it goes 100% (with the boost converter) to 0 and turns off with no in-between?

It will not take long for manufactures to issue "warranty void if used with batteriser" claims on products that have battery monitoring functionality....and 99.9% of customers will genuinely believe the product IS faulty as it will exhibit unusual behaviour.  Retails will notice the uptake in returns / exchanges very quickly.  I expect that itself will lead to some product verification, testing and then withdrawal from retail stores first, with manufactures following shortly after.  If batteriser sales really take off, this could actually lead to inflation of prices as manufacturers perceive lower yields and higher losses due to returns.

It will be chaos

Sorry if i'm not adding much to the discussions,
G

Not bad for your first post.

I think your comments are valid, and will wait to see the long term outcome of Batteriser use on well designed products.

The parallel here is the use of fuel additives to our cars.  If we add something to our fuel, and damage the engine, you can't expect the manufacturer to honour their warranty.

Ozwolf

Yeah it would be like putting ethanol in a Prius, the engine catches on fire, and then you expect the manufacture to replace the engine.

[Stupid Beard]

Talking about that fucking promo video with the Apple wireless keyboard: did you guys see that the woman typing on the keyboard actually sits right in-front of a freakin LAPTOP? Why would you need a keyboard for a laptop in the first place? That alone shows how ridiculous their marketing is.

I know people that do that. Usually it's either because they want a numpad or they want to use a keyboard that's more comfortable to type on for long periods. I'm not sure that would apply to the apple keyboard, though.

My apple wireless keyboard was horribly murdered by a cup of tea. It wasn't connected to a laptop, but I could see using a keyboard as a sacrificial thing to avoid loss of the laptop as being a valid use case. For what it's worth, the cuppa was mourned far more than the keyboard was.

[samgab]

Roohparvar went on to paraphrase Gandhi – "First they will ignore you; then they will laugh at you; then they will fight you; then you will win" – and his first punch in that perceived fight was to discredit Jones for having no formal electrical engineering qualifications, only a degree in performing arts from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Arts.

Nobody obviously bothered to fact check that 
Heads up Dr Bob, I don't have a degree in performing arts from NIDA. It's in my linkedIn profile as a joke 

You know, if it's character assassination they were after, they didn't get very creative. I mean if they really wanted to get crazy making stuff up, they could have made up something about being a fitness instructor, and the author of an e-book about online dating!   
Speaking of, I miss Davey Jonez' always insightful comments...

[EEVblog]

And act as a heatsink.

Not a very good one, if it's made of stainless steel.

Sure, but still a couple of orders of magnitude better than free air.

[Wytnucls]

I can see a lot of manufacturing difficulties:
Intricate 3D shape of the clip (4 different sets of dies).
Insulation coating, with some areas untouched for electrical contact.
Proper insertion of the populated circular PCB in the clip.
PCB to clip crimp or weld for a durable contact .
Finished product testing for mechanical and electrical reliability.

I'm no expert, but the cost of an automated production line for such a product must be huge.

[LabSpokane]

I can see a lot of manufacturing difficulties:
Intricate 3D shape of the clip (4 different set of dies).
Isolation coating, with some areas untouched for electrical contact.
Proper insertion of the populated circular PCB in the clip.
PCB to clip crimp or weld for a durable contact .
Finished product testing for mechanical and electrical reliability.

I'm no expert, but the cost of an automated production line for such a product must be huge.

I think that the original plan was to use Flextronics as the custom manufacturer (CM).  The CM will provide the production line and usually will require the client to pay for all custom fixturing, test jigs, etc.  At the current volume, I think there is going to be a question of whether this work is even in Flex's wheelhouse.  $350K is just a tiny, tiny customer for someone like Flex.  There's so much overhead in getting a customer like that set up, that it's just a loser from an overhead standpoint.  A Flex or a Foxconn usually won't take that kind of a client on. 

Knocking out the clip on a progressive die should actually be easy with some exceptions that I'm going to let Batteroo discover.  I've been to Tyco and watched them bang out contacts, and it's really impressive what they can do. 

You're dead on with the coating operation.  That is a major gotcha that they didn't plan on.  I'm assuming it will be a sprayed on coating.  That's going to be tricky because someone is going to have to hand place that spindly thing into a mask.  It's going to add a lot of cost to the product. 

Getting the PCB onto the clip --- well I think you're right there too.  That's going to be a DFM learning experience for someone.

Aside from the SMT work, the assembly production line won't be automated, I'm fairly certain about that.  They don't have nearly enough money to buy automation.  This will likely be standard SMT PCBs with hand assembly to the clips.  If someone was really clever, they might be able to run the whole shebang though a reflow oven with some aluminum fixtures and a bit of a presoak.

[Barny]

And act as a heatsink.

Not a very good one, if it's made of stainless steel.

I dont think its made of stainless steel.

Stainless steel is:
A.: Expensive
B.: Very difficult to solder
I think its some sort of tinplate or some sort of low cost spring-steel.

The coating could be some sort of powder coating.
The soldering and the melting of the coating could be done at the same time.

But I think that the clip an the PCB is only pressed together.
Perhaps only a press fit.

[EEVblog]

I dont think its made of stainless steel.

It is:

[EEVblog]

I dont think its made of stainless steel.

It is:

Actually, assuming that drawing is accurate, it looks like the stainless steel sleeve is soldered to the PCB. Of course it has to be to get the contact, unless they are doing some contact thing.
Perhaps no heatsinking on 2nd thought. Although it's maybe possible to use the positive output terminal as a small heatsink, but it would have to be isolated.

[Chipguy]

I dont think its made of stainless steel.
Stainless steel is:
A.: Expensive
B.: Very difficult to solder

This thing is so thin that is has to be made of stainless steel. The springy version of it.
Stainless steel is the only material tough enough not to bend, rip or buckle.
If you have ever drilled holes into 1mm thick 1.4301 (for the yanks 316 grade SS) you know what I mean.
For the same reason solder stencils are made of stainless steel. The material of the sleeve won't be much different from that.
A rough estimate calculation of a 0.127mm thick sleeve for an AA battery comes up to around 4 grams.
Stainless steel costs roughly $10 per kg, so we are talking about 4 cents for a AA sleeve.
Don't quote me on that, the numbers are rather crude estimates, could be 2 cents, could be 10 cent. But somewhere around that.

[5ky]

Man, that PCB is going to be taking a lot of physical force from the battery.  Especially those three solder tabs, granted they look to be pretty large.  (relatively speaking)  I assumed that there would be steel surrounding the PCB to hold it in place, but from that diagram, it looks like the solder tabs are what's holding it on to the chassis. 

[Godzil]

Force comming from the battery? There is no spring on the negative terminal

[Mr.B]

Force comming from the battery? There is no spring on the negative terminal

Devils advocate here...
The spring from the battery enclosure will provide sufficient pressure that an independent negative terminal spring is not required.

I am not defending batteriser here... I truly believe it is a totally BS product that will never ship.

[jippie]

[...]
The coating could be some sort of powder coating.
[...]

I am curious if this powder coating will stick well to the sharp cut edges, the one place on the clip where it is actually important for isolation purposes and which may be razor sharp and cut though the cell's protective plastic sleeve. The very reason why the clips are being coated in the first place.

[AmmoJammo]

How thick is the sleeve meant to be? 0.1mm?

I have some 0.15mm stainless steel, its cut from a PCB stencil...

a piece that's 14mm wide, measures around 0.1ohm along a 50mm distance....

I'll go throw some current at it now, and see what the voltage drop is, but I don't think they can use stainless steel, its not conductive enough...

[Godzil]

That's why some shown prototype use something like transparent heathshrink tube around the clip

[AmmoJammo]

How thick is the sleeve meant to be? 0.1mm?

I have some 0.15mm stainless steel, its cut from a PCB stencil...

a piece that's 14mm wide, measures around 0.1ohm along a 50mm distance....

I'll go throw some current at it now, and see what the voltage drop is, but I don't think they can use stainless steel, its not conductive enough...

I measure pretty much 100mv drop, at 1.5amp, so 0.06ohm.

However, I believe this piece of stainless steel is 50% thicker (0.15mm) compared to their sleeve...

And according to their pics, they have a section of the sleeve that is nowhere near 14mm wide, more like 5 or 6mm.

I reckon, at a 1.5amp draw, they'd be lucky to only get 200mv drop....

THEIR BUTTERISER HAS ITS OWN BUILT IN ESR!?!?

[Barny]

[...]
The coating could be some sort of powder coating.
[...]

I am curious if this powder coating will stick well to the sharp cut edges, the one place on the clip where it is actually important for isolation purposes and which may be razor sharp and cut though the cell's protective plastic sleeve. The very reason why the clips are being coated in the first place.

Take a look at the Pic of their official test and you'll see a little pice of paper:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-751-how-to-debunk-a-product-%28the-batteriser%29/msg756800/#msg756800

[nitro2k01]

Take a look at the Pic of their official test and you'll see a little pice of paper:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-751-how-to-debunk-a-product-%28the-batteriser%29/msg756800/#msg756800

Piece of paper? I'm seeing a piece of probably double-sided adhesive tape holding the battery holder in place, (or just an old piece that was left there for whatever reason) and also that clip appears as if it has two different colors because the metal is sharply bent and the light refelcts different due to different angles. Where is the piece of paper?

[jippie]

[...]
The coating could be some sort of powder coating.
[...]

I am curious if this powder coating will stick well to the sharp cut edges, the one place on the clip where it is actually important for isolation purposes and which may be razor sharp and cut though the cell's protective plastic sleeve. The very reason why the clips are being coated in the first place.

Take a look at the Pic of their official test and you'll see a little pice of paper:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-751-how-to-debunk-a-product-%28the-batteriser%29/msg756800/#msg756800

I think either the image is not clear enough to draw that conclusion, or I'm not looking at the right spot (which essentially makes the same point).