Vallon VMH3CS Mine Detector

[6666]

The Chinese have become very skilled in faking 18650 cells, and have made it very difficult to buy a reliable cell other than Panasonic or Sanyo
They have picked on ANY brand name that has the word "Fire" in it to fake the most.
They have this bad habit of putting a 200-300 milliamp hour cell inside a full size 18650 authentic looking case, and then labelling it with some ridiculously high amp hour rating on the case.
You can usually tell a fake from real 18650 by the weight, a real cell should weigh at least 42 gram, anything lighter will probably be fake.
If you buy fakes, immediately demand a refund.

[eclipse]

Chinese folks have found a way to fake weight too (they put small pieces of metal inside) to increase the weight.
I always buy batteries only from reputable source, LI-IONs are forbidden for AIR transportation anyway.
My last batt pack is composed by batteries pulled from half-dead laptop battery, cells still hold good charge, maybe not too good for a laptop, but decent for other stuff, probably better than ***FIRE batteries

[Ferric Toes]

The Chinese have become very skilled in faking 18650 cells, and have made it very difficult to buy a reliable cell other than Panasonic or Sanyo

You can usually tell a fake from real 18650 by the weight, a real cell should weigh at least 42 gram, anything lighter will probably be fake.
If you buy fakes, immediately demand a refund.

Taking the Whites TDi battery pack apart it has LGDA2E18650 printed on the sleeves of the individual cells. LG appears to be a reputable manufacturer based in Korea and the cells weigh a respectable 45 grams, so I will stick with them for the moment, since I have 8.

Eric.

[6666]

Yes LG cells are good cells.

I recently tested some generic 18650 cells I got from fleabay, going by some of the published tested capacity charts I hoped they might have been at least 1000 maH
but no, discharged at 300 mA's they are only 700 maH, they only weigh 32 grams and when you do the "tap" test, they "tink", thats when you gently tap 2 cells together they make a "tink" sound which means they are hollow or filled with flour, these generic no brand cells have a black case and labelled with white writing " Li-ion battery SJ 18650 6000 maH", so they are crap and currently demanding a refund from seller for telling lies about item.

I have now also bought same genuine Samsung 18650's so it will be interesting to see how they test.

Also I've been asking another fleabay seller about Boruit branded cells, they are in a black and gold case and marked 4000 maH, the sellers english is terrible and I suspect he is in china and not Sydney Australia as he claims but from what I can gather so far is I think he is trying to tell me that he has tested these cells at 2400 maH, which for the price and running 4 X 2 in parallel would be an acceptable 16v 4aH battery, but still trying to get better answers from him.

There is a very good article on buying cheap 18650 cells thats short and to the point thats worth a look
http://www.ebay.com/gds/18650-Batter...8020340/g.html

[daverave]

Yes LG cells are good cells.

I recently tested some generic 18650 cells I got from fleabay, going by some of the published tested capacity charts I hoped they might have been at least 1000 maH
but no, discharged at 300 mA's they are only 700 maH, they only weigh 32 grams and when you do the "tap" test, they "tink", thats when you gently tap 2 cells together they make a "tink" sound which means they are hollow or filled with flour, these generic no brand cells have a black case and labelled with white writing " Li-ion battery SJ 18650 6000 maH", so they are crap and currently demanding a refund from seller for telling lies about item.

I have now also bought same genuine Samsung 18650's so it will be interesting to see how they test.

Also I've been asking another fleabay seller about Boruit branded cells, they are in a black and gold case and marked 4000 maH, the sellers english is terrible and I suspect he is in china and not Sydney Australia as he claims but from what I can gather so far is I think he is trying to tell me that he has tested these cells at 2400 maH, which for the price and running 4 X 2 in parallel would be an acceptable 16v 4aH battery, but still trying to get better answers from him.

There is a very good article on buying cheap 18650 cells thats short and to the point thats worth a look
http://www.ebay.com/gds/18650-Batter...8020340/g.html

in the past ive really got ripped off with chinese 18650's and 12v 9800 mah battery packs...as far that i know there is nothing availiable over the 3400 mah mark.....personally i use 18650 3.7v batteries which
ive got from laptop battery packs most which are still good and rated between 2200 & 2400 maH.......anything with the words "ULTRAFIRE" written on them NEVER buy cause they are total crap !!! i once bought some ULTRAFIRE 6000 maH and when i did a discharge test on them i found them only to be around 800 maH.

[6666]

Yes you are right there Dave
this shonky seller on fleabay only wants to give me 25% of my purchase price, but thats not good enough,
here is my latest email to him which I think is fair, lets see what happens , there is only a small amount of money involved
but its a principle thing now, Ebay needs to clean out all these sellers of fake 18650 cells.

Hello
I will only accept a full refund of my money which I paid you in good faith ,
when I buy something on Ebay I expect to get a 100% genuine item that is advertised.

I only bought the batteries based on your advertising.

BUT you falsely advertised these fake batteries as being 6000 mAh, they are not 6000 mAh, so I want a full refund thank you

[daverave]

Yes you are right there Dave
this shonky seller on fleabay only wants to give me 25% of my purchase price, but thats not good enough,
here is my latest email to him which I think is fair, lets see what happens , there is only a small amount of money involved
but its a principle thing now, Ebay needs to clean out all these sellers of fake 18650 cells.

i bought some li-ion AA 3.7v from a UK dealer but he must have got them from china...total useless at around 400 maH...i did a ebay dispute and got my money refunded...as you say its not the money but the principal......ebay should outlaw these fake batteries but i guess as long that they are making money they dont seem to care.

[Qiaozhi]

Ebay needs to clean out all these sellers of fake 18650 cells.

You can report the item to eBay as a counterfeit product.

[Ferric Toes]

I reported my dissatisfaction to the seller, but will probably keep them as dummies. I fully drained them down so that there is virtually no charge left. I am in the process of repackaging a Vallon electronics into a watertight Pelican case and need a loaded battery pack so that I can get the fitting right. Best with discharged batteries as then less likely to start a fire.
The batteries came with a 100 - 240V mains charger, also made in China, and so far I can't fault it. It charges at 4.2V and 1amp and works fine with the LG cells. It charges 2 cells with a LED for each that goes from red - orange - green when charged.

Eric.

[6666]

Ha the seller has offered a full refund in 2 days, and he wants a 5 star rateing, fat chance.

[daverave]

Hi Eric
Sorry to go off topic but can you tell me if the goldscan 5 is the same as the whites tdi pro...also is the audio sound the same ????

[Ferric Toes]

Hi Eric
Sorry to go off topic but can you tell me if the goldscan 5 is the same as the whites tdi pro...also is the audio sound the same ????

Yes, pretty much the same, but production TDI pro's went over to surface mount components instead of through hole as the GS5 was. As far as I recall, the sound was the same.

Eric.

[daverave]

ok thanks eric.

[Polymer]

You can report the item to eBay as a counterfeit product.

Well, they are most likely original cells . The problem is that they are often re-cycled from old laptop powerpacks. The single batteries are re-wrapped bright and shiny.
Ingenious re-cycling, eh!

As far as I know there are five original manufacturers of 18650's. Beware of inferior clones though.

[KingJL]

Success!

Eric,
Just made a curly cord with Belden 9221 coax cable using Sean's method (modified)... 20 min @ 250 deg F (121 deg C) (in my wife's kitchen oven).; 20 min in freezer... results: 1 meter curly cord, 1/2" coil inside diameter, 85 pf (measured).
The form fixture:


after oven,freezer treatment and taken off form:


after turning inside-out; the coil tightened up:


now to measure the capacitance:


I think I will make about 3 more of these... I got 20' of Belden 9221 cable with BNC connectors on each end. I will keep the BNC ends with 40" of cable and use the rest for 1 meter curly cords!