This is how A123 care about quality control

Testing was done at the pack and module levels, not just single cells. I'm going to stop talking about this stuff here for now, at least until I get the cells back in my hands and can really see what's there. Right now I'm talking half blind about cells I haven't had a chance to get a good look at. Pics online are no substitute for holding them in your hands.
 
Understandable.
Having delt with customer complaints somewhat, I know how difficult it is to comment without first hand evidence to inspect and/or data to analyse.
Rarely do those discussions with the customer go smoothly, even if full replacement and compensation is offered ,there is little to be gained for the manufacturer, so I was thinking you were being slightly unwise in offering to progress this situation on an open forum...(washing dirty laundry in public ,..etc )
But now that you have taken it to this point, you will at least need to follow up with a detailed report on the final conclusions, or this community will lose confidence in A123s products and customer support.
 
Any customer buying our stuff legitimately deserves the same level of service any other customer gets, IMO. Questions should be answered with the same clarity at all levels. I believe in transparency, it's how I've always tried to operate in this sphere. This means admitting mistakes when they've been made, and being clear on what people can and cannot expect from the company going forward. I know good and well any technical data or correspondence that makes it's way into buyers' hands via this channel is going to wind up online sooner or later. Heck, this ended up online before we even had a chance to do anything at all.
 
wb9k,
can you finally provide here those research documnts you promised 2 days ago?
I provide you with all cell numbers, you supposed to track down those documnts when you have cell numbers.
You said you have
"mountain of data to proof...."
where is it?
 
wb9k said:
The wrinkles on the cell do occur sometimes, but are not a rejectable defect. We have mountains of data on these cells showing that there is virtually no difference in performance, longevity, or reliability vs. cells that appear perfectly flat. This includes life cycling, vibration, and all manner of environmental testing I may be able to post some of the supporting data here for anyone who is curious.
Click to expand...

Are you referring to this statement? Because it doesn't sound like a promise. That would be potentially commercially sensitive technical data you are asking to be published openly on the internet.
 
One thing about wrinkles........how do they get there? From the cell being bent by a very large degree, on one cell I have, you can see wrinkles on front and back, and match up in a manner where the cell has been bent. Bending the cell enough to get folds in the aluminium/copper is not good, even under high pressure aluminium and copper will definitely hold those ridges to some degree. Once thin aluminium or copper has been bent its pretty much impossible to get it back to new.

For a123 to advertise with pictures of cells with no wrinkles in them......as you would expect.......and then to send out cells with wrinkles would I think lay basis for a claim of false advertising.

These cells have definitely not been taken from the a1 quality pile, what does a123 normally do with reject cells? they get rid of them, thats one way so many cells landed up in china. Not good enough to sell by a123, but still quite useable. Someone at a123 has got around the normal chanels of quality control at a123 in this case my guess is, someone has sent them around the corner to Stortronics ( in the next street) and probably made a little profit for themselves by sending out the rejects that a123 would normally trash ( although still quite useable)........just my theory.
Thats one reason why all the batch numbers are all over the place, they came from the reject pile/box or however they store them.
 
You can see in the photos posted by miro13car that the wrinkles are like blood veins, not straight as would be produced by a fold. I think everyone would agree that a cell that has been folded will almost certainly be significantly damaged.

If minor wrinkles do not affect cell performance then it is not false advertising if there is some insignificant cosmetic difference between the picture on the website and the product you receieve. You buy cells based on an electrical specification, not a cosmetic one. Would you also be up in arms if you received cells where the pouches were a slightly different shade of grey to the website photo? Do you realise that every cell made is a slightly different physical size?

Would you sue mcDonalds because the lettuce in the burger you buy isn't arranged just like the one in the photo above the counter?

It seems like there's a lot of hand-bagging of A123 going on here considering the reputation of their products, the personal attention miro13car has received in resolving this issue, and that A123 has offered to replace all the cells and carry out an investigation on those returned. If someone expects much more than that I have to wonder if they live in the real world.
 
back to the real world, here is one of the two pictures of miro13cars earlier posts showing folding, doesn't look like veins to me,
the other pic was vein like. Couldn't get lines much straighter than those shown below
 
Punx0r said:
You can see in the photos posted by miro13car that the wrinkles are like blood veins, not straight as would be produced by a fold. I think everyone would agree that a cell that has been folded will almost certainly be significantly damaged.

If minor wrinkles do not affect cell performance then it is not false advertising if there is some insignificant cosmetic difference between the picture on the website and the product you receieve. You buy cells based on an electrical specification, not a cosmetic one. Would you also be up in arms if you received cells where the pouches were a slightly different shade of grey to the website photo? Do you realise that every cell made is a slightly different physical size?

Would you sue mcDonalds because the lettuce in the burger you buy isn't arranged just like the one in the photo above the counter?

It seems like there's a lot of hand-bagging of A123 going on here considering the reputation of their products, the personal attention miro13car has received in resolving this issue, and that A123 has offered to replace all the cells and carry out an investigation on those returned. If someone expects much more than that I have to wonder if they live in the real world.
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Bingo!

As I said, I am done talking technical anything on this return here until I have the complaint cells in my hand--and have had time to look at them and investigate any issues they may have.

This noise isn't doing my sanity any favors either. I need to remember all the good that is going on here. This morning there were a few visitors coming into the building with genuine looks of wonder on their faces--the sight of a few EV's and a sizable facility making parts for them still has that effect on a lot of people. I just got out of a quick, but fascinating meeting with a part supplier this morning. We are pushing the limits of automotive electronics on several fronts. There is tons of fun, exciting work here and I learn something damn near every day. It's like getting paid to go to school. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to go concentrate on that for a while...
 
you should never have responded to this to begin with. he has done this in the past along with others who seem to think they can intimidate the suppliers by trashing their reputation here on the sphere.

you would have received the pouches eventually in any case for analysis and could have posted your results then.
 
The internet is 99% complainers that spend far more time fretting than learning from experience. Real life is the polar opposite it seems. This forum was a break from the norm for a very long time, but the ways of facebook and instant satisfaction have slowly crept in.


I would suggest you wait for the cells before putting more effort in here. The folks that understand what you are saying don't need anything else. The folks that choose to ignore what you are saying will continue to ignore it and regress further into BS sky is falling assumptions. Let them. You don't want them as customers anyway, as they will become less satisfied the harder you try.
 
I think WB9K is doing a huge service, and I appreciate it. From your last post, it seems you suspect these were rejects sold out the back door? That would be excellent news to hear, as we both know cells can be made with safely aligned tabs, wrinkle free and shipped wrinkle free.

Sounds like it's time to conclude business with whatever authorized re-sellers that are willing to buy/sell rejects. Obviously an unacceptable practice.

ATB,
-Luke
 
I bet the wrinkles were put in the material before or just before going in the machine or from the supply rollers pushing pulling thru the machine. As the material act's like thick plastic line foil.
Fold a piece of foil and try to get the wrinkle out.
Should be easy to see in the process.
 
999zip999 said:
I bet the wrinkles were put in the material before or just before going in the machine or from the supply rollers pushing pulling thru the machine. As the material act's like thick plastic line foil.
Fold a piece of foil and try to get the wrinkle out.
Should be easy to see in the process.
Click to expand...


The pouch material is first rough die-cut into laminated foil blanks. Then the blanks are placed into a die that stamps each half of the pouch to have the correct sized pocket in it. In my experience, if you attempt to draw deeper than ~3.5mm per side, it causes excessive pin-holing in the laminate coatings and long-term fallout increases (hence why 7mm is as thick of pouch as I will use now). After stamping the foil blanks are picked up with an arm that has an array of gentle vacuum cups on it, and moved into a post stamping trimming die to get the edges precise enough to line up with the other bottom half of the stamped foil when it's foled in half and coupled on the outside edges to form the pouch. After the die cut stack of foils with a seperator woven between the layers gets it's tabs welded on in an elaborate fixture with an elaborate ultrasonic welding setup, they are placed into one side of this stamped foil laminate, at which point it's gently folded over and the edges go through a thermal and ultrasonic plastic weld joint up the sides, that is then folded by a very clever machine that looks like a miniature sheet-metal-brake.

There are many more steps the cell goes through after this, like getting it's electrolyte fill, getting pre-maturely sealed with a big area still hanging off the side of the foil to inflate like a balloon as it's going through pre-formation and formation and a test-cycle (scrapped if >+-0.25% Ri or .+-0.125% Capacity, because it means something isn't right), then getting the inflated side pouch cut-off and getting final sealed under vacuum. I can assure you none of the steps ever require wrinkles to be put into the cell, nor does shipping them, nor does assembling them into a battery. Those would be defects, and likely the reason those cells were rejected scrap (if WB9K's guess is right).

It never moves through rollers, and it would be a disaster if it did, when you roll a pouch cell, a seam blows out from hydraulic forces as the electrolyte gets migrated all to one end that has a limited volume. The foils inside move through many stages of massive calendaring rollers to create the required anode/cathode thickness and flatness and uniformity, but the foil of the pouch or a completed cell never see them.

ATB,
-Luke
 
I have to chime in too...

wb9k : Thanks for all your contributions to the board. I've got some of these cells coming, so I've been reading all that I can about them. I've been seeing a lot of your posts...thanks for sharing.
 
Thanks so much to the many who have posted kind words of encouragement. I really appreciate it.

Luke, I think you've misread something I've said. These cells were definitely not "sold out the back door" or anything like that. At this point, I need to see all the cells being complained about--in my hot little hands--so I can take an honest shot at a competent investigation. I'm not saying there are no problems here, but there definitely is no fraud or dumping of scrap or B-grade product going on either.
 
Punx0r said:
whatever said:
a123 company are not claiming wrinkles are ok, wb9k is claiming wrinkles are ok. a123 company has never posted on this forum
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A123 cannot post on this forum as it is not a physical being. Only it's representatives can do that, which wb9k is. IIRC wb9k works in the quality department and as such is likely to know more than most in the company about the issue of wrinkles. It probably went like this: quality department automatically rejects cells with wrinkles based on theory, the bean-counters challenge this, the engineering department conducts tests to prove whether or not wrinkles make any difference.
Click to expand...

For sure this is what happened. But what happens when you go bankrupt and get bought by the Chinese (the plan all along)? A new set of even more cuthroat of bean-counters come in and demand yield be improved. What is the easiest and fasted way to do this? Lower QC limits.

When you start compromising and start accepting wrinkles the problem becomes how do you get QC to define what is unacceptable? The number of wrinkles? The size of the wrinkles? The location of the wrinkle? The height of the wrinkle? Is each of those metrics weighted? Is it a judgement call based on a visual inspection? Guess what happens when a person is expected to visually examine a thousand cells a day? Is the lighting controlled? Is their eyesight checked? Are they suffering from fatigue? Guess what happens when management complains too many cells are being scrapped? The limits get changed against the will of the engineers. Visual inspection is the first standard to fall. Then some manager gets a raise for increasing yield without actually improving the mfg process. This is the real world and it sucks.

Even if it were true the wrinkles have no effect on the cell life or safety, they should have been put in the B grade pile for failing cosmetic inspection.

Saying you cant prevent the wrinkles just means you arent trying hard enough or cant afford to invest in new equipment.

Not every user is going to use silicone foam pads between the cells. Most are going to use some much cheaper option like poron (about 5 times cheaper) that will be like having no pad at all after a few years. Small wrinkles may be OK with high quality pads, and even cheap pads when they are new. I am sure that is what the test show, but what should have been done is to prove the wrinkles are OK in the worst case application which is heavy compression, very high amp draw on an old cell with high IR, and no pad at all on a vibration table.

Knowing what I know about pouch cells makes me think they never be sold to anyone in raw cell form, let alone hobbyist. They should me made into hard case battery packs in the same facility the cells were made in, never touched by human hands. I live in a perfect world.
 
Those are all valid points with which I can identify ;)

My opinions are based on my impressions of A123 as a company and the impressive performance of their products. As such, I assume them to be sufficiently quality-focused to maintain acceptable production QC levels and have done sufficient worst-case lifetime testing of wrinkled cells to ensure they are OK.

I would be genuinely interested to know how the wrinkle issue is quantified and assessed in production. For all we know it might be strongly related to another physical or electrical characteristic and can be assessed that way. It would also be interesting to know the root cause of the wrinkles.

I'm sure A123 could prevent the wrinkles, I don't think it's a case of not trying hard enough. There would just be a cost associated to it, which could be minimal, or could double the price of the product.

Perhaps you are right: bare pouch cells aren't suitable for non-OEMs or commercial pack builders. Can cells are much more user-friendly and tolerant of abuse :)
 
This is the first time I"ve ever heard of bad cells coming out of a123 directly ( except for the fisker debarkle)
( the chinese sold "backdoor" cells on taobao/aliexpress/victpower/a123rc etc are a123 rejects, or used cells in one way or another and not related to this thread).
I think ideally the head of the livonia plant should post some sort of explanation or at least investigate how it occurred. Its very bad for a123's reputation to have it made known publicly that rejects were sent directly out of the factory at Livonia to a customer ( via stortronic).
I realise its unlikely the head of a123 livonia plant would post on this forum, but it would be good if they did.
 
flathill said:
Not every user is going to use silicone foam pads between the cells. Most are going to use some much cheaper option like poron (about 5 times cheaper) that will be like having no pad at all after a few years. Small wrinkles may be OK with high quality pads, and even cheap pads when they are new.
Click to expand...
I used manilla folder paper cut to size. Mostly because the OSNPower kit assumed, so required a spacer between cells. Don't know what other function pads might serve. Electrical isolation?
Knowing what I know about pouch cells makes me think they never be sold to anyone in raw cell form, let alone hobbyist. They should be made into hard case battery packs in the same facility the cells were made in, never touched by human hands. I live in a perfect world.
Click to expand...
I await the day A123 releases its 12 volt 14ah batteries for start/stop cars, and hopefully, at an affordable price point. Until then, availability of raw cells is a great service to the community. :mrgreen:
 
whatever said:
Its very bad for a123's reputation to have it made known publicly that rejects were sent directly out of the factory at Livonia to a customer ( via stortronic).
Click to expand...

Unless you have access to information not included in this thread I cannot see how you can possibly justify this. Handling damage from the packaging stage onwards is not a factory reject, nor are the wrinkles if they are as they appear to be. The one cell isolator might be. But you're not accusing A123 of inadvertently letting defective cells slip though the QC process, you're accusing them of knowingly despatching reject cells (via the front or back door).

I assume that all the barcodes and serial numbers on each cell allow complete traceability for each cell through all stages of manufacture. If so, wb9k will soon find out exactly what's going on with each cell, including test data and whether it was rejected. We should all therefore wait for his inspection before throwing around accusations.
 
you gotta be kidding. the only facts are that A123 had established that these surface imperfections are not germane to the cycle life by their internal testing but everyone (with no technical degree or scientific or engineering training) has made all kinds of claims to the opposite and have accused them of selling defective products "under the table" through some kinda evil back door scheme. this behavior is just like this place. all misinformed and their own personal opinion, not fact.
 
dnmun wrote: the only facts are that A123 had established that these surface imperfections are not germane to the cycle life by their internal testing but everyone
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a123 didn't establish that at all, wb9k said that, my prediction is wb9k will never publish any paper from a123 saying wrinkles are fine, because such a paper doesn't exist: my prediction anyhow.
 
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