Battery holder broken wire

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follett0542
 
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Battery holder broken wire

Post by follett0542 »

Hello,

We purchased 205 kits, part number 3332 in July 2021 for Follett store 0542, to be sold to students in an robotics engineering class, instructors are reporting that upward of 100 of the kits have an issue with the battery holder, part number 830, red wire on holder is either broken or breaks before students can begin to assemble their robots. Students cannot proceed with their classwork until battery holder is repaired.

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Franklin97355
 
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Re: Battery holder broken wire

Post by Franklin97355 »

Can you post some pictures that show the damage? It will help us to check the trouble, thanks.

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follett0542
 
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Re: Battery holder broken wire

Post by follett0542 »

batteryholder.jpg
batteryholder.jpg (534.75 KiB) Viewed 2135 times

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Franklin97355
 
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Re: Battery holder broken wire

Post by Franklin97355 »

Can you post one with the connection showing? the red cable you posted looks like there was a significant force put on the plug.

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mrust
 
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Re: Battery holder broken wire

Post by mrust »

Hi there!

Just a quick follow-up on the original post. For context, I am the faculty member leading the team of instructors who teach the course that is using the battery pack as part of their robotics project. As was noted above, we are seeing a failure rate of 50% on this battery pack, so 100 out of the 200 battery packs we ordered have failed.

We are seeing many of these broken wires right after shipping. Meaning when the student removes the battery pack from the Adafruit packaging, the wire is already broken before they've ever used it. That probably accounts for a quarter of the failures (and some of the replacement parts we ordered came similarly broken). The remaining ones failed when the students were connecting the battery pack to their robot (i.e., to the motor shield sitting atop the Feather board, which is plugged into a breadboard on top of the chassis). I directly observed this failure occur for several students, and can attest that they were not applying any significant force. And it was disheartening for the students because they were in the middle of constructing their robot and had their progress halted because the battery packing wiring failed.

One of the faculty members on my team has asked us to look for a different supplier of the battery packs, because they are disappointed with the quality/failure rate. But I wanted to report it to Adafruit because I suspect that this is a fabrication/assembly issue that should be corrected to avoid others having the same issue. We have had a great relationship with Adafruit and are a big believer in the value you provide to the marketplace, and I'd like to continue supporting you going forward. For all of the above, we are hopeful this issue can be resolved.

Thanks for your attention to this!

-Mike

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mrust
 
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Re: Battery holder broken wire

Post by mrust »

As requested, here is another photo of the issue we are seeing. For this photo, we have removed the plate that normally covers the solder connections for the wiring so as to show the inside view.
PXL_20211020_172015698-min.jpg
PXL_20211020_172015698-min.jpg (332.02 KiB) Viewed 1758 times

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adafruit2
 
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Re: Battery holder broken wire

Post by adafruit2 »

oof ok we will tell the factory, as we have not had issues historically.

these are the three suggestions we have to resolve quickly:
1) solder the red wire back on then add tape or hotglue to keep the wires from breaking (fastest)
2) we can send another set of battery packs *however you will need to immediately add tape or hotglue to avoid the wires breaking (will take about a week)
3) we can send the packs back to the factory to do the strain relief/repair work, but which will take many weeks.

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mrust
 
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Re: Battery holder broken wire

Post by mrust »

Thanks so much for the prompt reply; we really appreciate it.

We have been addressing the situation via option 1 (re-soldering followed by hot gluing to solidify). So that is keeping us moving forward, although with the volume of failures and the size of of soldering crew, that usually puts a student's robot out of commission for 2-3 days while they are waiting for the part. So if we could get a stock of replacement parts, we could swap the failed part for a fresh one while soldering is in progress. That would keep the students moving forward with less disruption.

We wouldn't need 100 replacement parts for that kind of workflow; something in the 25-50 range would probably be sufficient.

Thanks for considering it.

-Mike

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adafruit2
 
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Re: Battery holder broken wire

Post by adafruit2 »

thanks for being chill - we're here to make things work :)
email support@adafruit and request whatever qty you need.

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