Made By Monkeys

Andrew Morris cautions readers to beware when you see one of these made-in-China (shocking, isn't it?) mini-drills as engineers made some bad trade-offs in the design.

"I see many of these things at flea markets and garage sales. Highly useful for PC work, but I think people buy them and then are disappointed with their performance. The motor screams at high RPM unloaded and the small 9 or 12 volt AC adapter is almost useless. It is so underpowered that the drill motor slows to a crawl, not to mention that it has no speed regulation.

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Not dazzled by the special effects of a cheap fibre optic light, Clive Mitchell decided to hack his own:

"Fibre optic lights like this one have been about for a long time. They were originally made using glass fibres illuminated by a candle shaped light bulb, but these days the fibres tend to be plastic with a focused low voltage lamp as the light source.

These cheap gimmick fibre sprays are available in the UK from "one pound stores" which would probably equate to "dollar stores" (make that 'two dollar stores' with the current exchange rate!) in the USA. They tend to be battery powered and have a few flashing coloured lamps inside.Inside are three self flashing lamps with small bi-metallic contacts inside. They pulse and flash irregularly, making the fibre optic spray pulse in a rather vulgar manner. It's a complete waste of a good bunch of fibres, so I developed a project to convert one to LEDs and make it run directly from the mains.

View lit necklace

You know what's scariest about Halloween? The avalanche of cheap seasonal merchandise (like the LED necklace shown here) that descends upon the stores around this time. This ever-increasing parade of gawdy, noisy schlock underscores just how low some companies have stooped by trading off any semblance of quality or actual fright-inducing gore in favor of tawdry, unrealistic special effects, To wit, just this weekend I saw on display an offensive rubbery-lipped, talking slug. A nasty piece of elastomer, IMHO.

Craig Johnson, who runs the website www.ledmuseum.org, where he posts some highly entertaining product reviews, had a few choice words to say about this Chinese-made flashlight advertised as "no battery needed."

A fan of monkey-themed anything, these elastomer key covers made in China seemed like a cheap and cheerful way to tell my keys apart for $2.99. But after only what I'd consider normal use, they quickly turned from cute to grotesque, with cracked cheeks, gaping eye holes, and horrible rictus grins.

A frustrated design engineer whose company uses a proprietary lithium-ion battery made in China complained recently here in the Made by Monkeys blog about significant problems with those batteries swelling up.

Bloated batteries sound like fodder for yet another “Made in China” recall story – and it’s not inconceivable that some manufacturing defect could turn out to be the culprit in this case.

But when it comes to lithium ion batteries, it turns out that how you charge one can mean the difference between a well-functioning device and one that bears a resemblance to a certain top criminal underlord in the galaxy.

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If an incredibly low price isn't an obvious enough tip-off, here's a surefire way to tell a cloned product from the real thing: In a lame effort to "prove" that the fake has been through some sort of rigorous quality-control process, it usually carries at least one official-looking label to that effect.

Take this $20 clone of the $270 U2 SureFire Ultra LED flashlight, which is one of the toughest and brightest flashlights out there. The clone is the one in front with the gold "Q.C. Passed" label on its bezel.

Of course, there's other telltale signs that this Chinese-made light doesn't come close to the real thing, as Craig Johnson, operator of the website www.ledmuseum.org, a site devoted to all things LED (including some highly entertaining reviews of LED-based products), discovered on closer inspection:

Warning: Toaster covers may be dangerous to your health. That is, if you own a Salton Cook's Essential 4-slide-wide electric toaster, which was voluntary recalled because of a tendency to turn on automatically and ignite items placed on top of it. The toaster was made in China.

According to a release by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with
the online retailer QVC:

QVC has received information that ten toasters reportedly turned on spontaneously, including one incident of fire damage to kitchen cabinets and two incidents of toaster covers burned. No injuries have been reported.

Maybe a toaster cover just isn't a good idea after all, given this online review
at eopinions:

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Are there any real magnetic induction shake-to-charge flashlights out there? Phil Karras relates his run-in with some more flagrant fakes on his website:

"I'm not saying that the flashlights were not worth the $2.50 I paid, but they were not as advertised. The flashlight box clearly stated in poor, but understandable English, that the flashlight did NOT use batteries, all you had to do to make it light was to shake it back and forth.

On my way out I heard someone say that there was no magnet inside the flashlight. Instead of going right back to the vendor, though, I went home and ran an experiment. I left one of the flashlights on while I went out for a couple hours. When I returned, the flashlight was dark. I picked it up and shook it, but no amount of shaking would make it shine again."

While there's evidence that some low-cost lighting products made in China are of dubious quality, I have no data, anecdotal or otherwise, on quartz clocks manufactured there.

Though if a clock costs you only $1, I suppose you can expect to get what you pay for.

José Pino has apparently run into more than a few cheesily-made quartz clocks, or just has had extremely bad luck, as he's come up with a nifty circuit to get one-second (1hz) pulses from a broken quartz clock. He writes:

"Quartz clocks break easily (especially if made in China) after a while. The gears lose lubrication and the dust gets the job done. Fortunately, the electronics of the clock work for many years without problem, so you can "hack" a quartz clock to get a timebase generator, which can be used in any project that needs exactly one-second pulses."

Check out the full instructions (including step-by-step photos and circuit diagrams) and other gadgets on his website.