Kidney Puncher selling mislabeled wire?

[Celt1]

I don't know the facts behind all this but figured I'd post it for the sake of those who may have NiChrome (Nickel) allergies who might get nickel wire when they have ordered Kanthal. Sounds like an issue to follow to see how it turns out.



I know Jai Haze is sort of an excitable guy, but there does seem to be some objective reason for concern.

 

[Myk]

Could be an honest mistake, a risk of repackaging and selling bulk. 3rd shift worker gets drunk, dumps the forklift, doesn't get them sorted right trying to rush for AM shipment. Shouldn't happen but does, that's why the end manufacturer checks when they can.

Could have been treated as such and even resulted in a quick recall/alert notice to everyone possibly involved, but once someone starts threatening an exposé and lawsuits the one being threatened has to get lawyers involved before they can do anything. He created that situation.
Important issue yes, but does he want it rectified or does he want to chastise? Seems like he picked the later.

I could run into a very similar situation, order nickle free jewelry, get the wrong thing, customer has a reaction. I would have no possible way to check. This would absolutely not be the way I would handle it. First you give them a chance before you start threats or go public. If you want it taken care of fast you leave them in the apologetic state not put them on the defense so they lawyer up.

I'm just me, I haven't any repeat spools of the same wire from KP to have run into differences (but I still have enough kanthal to open a toaster repair shop).
Everything I have ohms out right and agrees with Steam Engine. I just checked all of my wire with HDD magnets. KP 26ga SS was very slightly magnetic (strong magnets would barely pick up a nib if touched to it), 34ga was light enough to get picked up without touching it, neither spool will hold the magnets.
The only one that didn't check out right was old 30ga that came with an atty I figured was kanthal. No wonder I hated that stuff, glad I never bought any nichrome.

 

[Celt1]

Could be an honest mistake, a risk of repackaging and selling bulk. 3rd shift worker gets drunk, dumps the forklift, doesn't get them sorted right trying to rush for AM shipment. Shouldn't happen but does, that's why the end manufacturer checks when they can.

Could have been treated as such and even resulted in a quick recall/alert notice to everyone possibly involved, but once someone starts threatening an exposé and lawsuits the one being threatened has to get lawyers involved before they can do anything. He created that situation.
Important issue yes, but does he want it rectified or does he want to chastise? Seems like he picked the later.

I could run into a very similar situation, order nickle free jewelry, get the wrong thing, customer has a reaction. I would have no possible way to check. This would absolutely not be the way I would handle it. First you give them a chance before you start threats or go public. If you want it taken care of fast you leave them in the apologetic state not put them on the defense so they lawyer up.

I'm just me, I haven't any repeat spools of the same wire from KP to have run into differences (but I still have enough kanthal to open a toaster repair shop).
Everything I have ohms out right and agrees with Steam Engine. I just checked all of my wire with HDD magnets. KP 26ga SS was very slightly magnetic (strong magnets would barely pick up a nib if touched to it), 34ga was light enough to get picked up without touching it, neither spool will hold the magnets.
The only one that didn't check out right was old 30ga that came with an atty I figured was kanthal. No wonder I hated that stuff, glad I never bought any nichrome.

Yea, I agree ".... happens". But what Jai was pointing out was like 5 different gauges over a number of months in different shipments. So to me that is an indication of a systemic and sustained problem, so i thought it was worth pointing out to folk here.

If nothing else people who have purchased this wire can give it a magnetic test as it is very simple to perform, and check the resistance to see if it is within predicted norms. Particularly for those that have a nickel sensitivity.

 

[Myk]

Yea, I agree ".... happens". But what Jai was pointing out was like 5 different gauges over a number of months in different shipments. So to me that is an indication of a systemic and sustained problem, so i thought it was worth pointing out to folk here.

If nothing else people who have purchased this wire can give it a magnetic test as it is very simple to perform, and check the resistance to see if it is within predicted norms. Particularly for those that have a nickel sensitivity.

Same 3rd shift worker, probably someone's brother-in-law KP does need to get it sorted.

I agree it's worth pointing out. I never knew of magnet test differences.

 

[Myk]

Just got this email from KP:



A message from Craig Larsen, the owner of Kidney Puncher LLC:


On Saturday, 5/5/18, we received an email from a wholesale customer stating that he had custom labeled spools of our wire that were mislabeled as Kanthal A-1.

On Monday 5/7/18 we performed a magnetic test on every wire spool in our warehouse and in our retail stores. The purpose of this test was to verify the accuracy of our labels in regards to wire "formula". I.e. we wanted to make sure that if a spool was labeled as Kanthal A-1, that it attracted a magnet. If it was labeled as Nichrome 80, that it did not attract a magnet.

Out of the over 40k spools we had on hand, 99.92% of them passed the magnetic test.

The small # that did not pass were discarded as scrap.

We have re-examined our cGMP process for wire product production, which includes labeling. We identified the gap that allowed this rare failure and put measures in place to fix it.

After further email conversation with the wholesale customer in question, it was determined that he had 11 mislabeled spools out of 768 spools in his order history.

In case there are more mislabeled spools out there, we are sending this email to our retail ecommerce site customers to encourage you to magnet test any of our wire spools you may have. We believe the number of mislabeled spools to be very small. If you find one of your spools fails the magnet test, please contact support@KidneyPuncher.com to arrange for a replacement.

Since 2014, we have sold over 375,000 KP wire products, consisting of spools, 3-ft wire cards and pre-made coils.

On 5/7 and 5/8/18, our team reviewed all of our customer service records: email, Zendesk (ticket based support system) and Slack.

Based on our research we have a 99.98% customer satisfaction rate.

Our company remains committed to providing the highest quality wire products for the vaping community.

Sincerely,

Craig Larsen
Owner, Kidney Puncher LLC

 

[Celt1]

Interesting! Good for Kidney Puncher for investigating and doing some communication. I did find it interesting that they think .08% is a small number for a failure rate. From a quality control perspective, that is not a good result. Imagine if your car brakes failed at an almost 1% rate. "Hey, our cars almost make it to 100 stops before killing a pedestrian". "Our Grocery only sells .08% tainted items".

They would not be in business. Anyway, hope they figure it out and do well.

 

[Myk]

I'm just impressed they sent that email to me with as few times as I've bought wire. Bought small and often at first long ago, then bought big and rarely since.

.08% is almost .10% not 1%. .0008 is 8 in 10,000 not 1 in 100. My Dr's seem to think when they say "the odds of cancer with this drug is only X in 10,000" that it sounds low.
Comes out to be 32 out of their 40,000 inventory. Acceptable? Not really. Hopefully they fixed it.

I don't know about how many tainted items groceries expect but 8 out of 10,000 mislabeled cans may be acceptable.
Any tainted food would be a big deal to me being immune suppressed. Not having a nickel allergy it's mislabeling to me. I'm not sure, haven't seen reports of people vaping something with nickel having a hospitalizing reaction (I have seen reports of no issues vaping nichrome in spite of having nickel allergy). Most of what I've seen has been precautionary, you have a skin reaction to nickel, don't push your luck exposing your lungs to it. But I'm going to guess most people starting out with prebuilt cheap have vaped on nichrome (as I found out my RBA supplied wire was nichrome).
I don't even remember anyone thinking about it until Ni200 came about for TC.

 

[zoiDman]

Interesting! Good for Kidney Puncher for investigating and doing some communication. I did find it interesting that they think .08% is a small number for a failure rate. From a quality control perspective, that is not a good result. Imagine if your car brakes failed at an almost 1% rate. "Hey, our cars almost make it to 100 stops before killing a pedestrian". "Our Grocery only sells .08% tainted items".

They would not be in business. Anyway, hope they figure it out and do well.

But aren't things like "Failure Rates" or "Non-Conformity" Percentages kinda tied to resulting/potential effect when we consider Severity?

I mean if 8 People out of 10,000 Brakes Fail in there car, that could be the makings for a Very Bad Day.

But if those same 8 People out of 10,000 get a spool of NiChrome instead of the Kanthal A1 they bought, is the Severity of things the same as your Brakes Failing?

Not Defending Kidney Puncher. Sounds like there was a Screw Up.

But I can Appreciate them trying to be Somewhat Transparent about things. And perhaps their Corrective Action(s) will reduce future Screw Ups from occurring.

 

[stols001]

I got that email too, and I was happy the owner was willing to address it. I really like Kidney Puncher for a lot of things etc.

Anna

 

[Myk]

But aren't things like "Failure Rates" or "Non-Conformity" Percentages kinda tied to resulting/potential effect when we consider Severity?

I mean if 8 People out of 10,000 Brakes Fail in there car, that could be the makings for a Very Bad Day.

But if those same 8 People out of 10,000 get a spool of NiChrome instead of the Kanthal A1 they bought, is the Severity of things the same as your Brakes Failing?

Not Defending Kidney Puncher. Sounds like there was a Screw Up.

But I can Appreciate them trying to be Somewhat Transparent about things. And perhaps their Corrective Action(s) will reduce future Screw Ups from occurring.

That's what I was saying about tainted food. I'd be heading to the ER at least to be looked at. And I know someone who was healthy until she got botulism at a restaurant, chronic patient since.

I only know of a few anecdotal reports of people with nickel allergy vaping on nichrome without any problem but it's easy to imagine it unknowingly happens a lot. If vaping on nichrome blisters people's airways that would be very important and I could see it being equal to tainted food, but I don't know if that happens.

 

[Celt1]

A follow-up video on the issue is out. Looks like Kidney Puncher is following through:

 

[Myk]

A follow-up video on the issue is out. Looks like Kidney Puncher is following through:

He's not going to say the names of the other 4 for Dachshund reasons???

 

[DeloresRose]

I'm just impressed they sent that email to me with as few times as I've bought wire. Bought small and often at first long ago, then bought big and rarely since.

.08% is almost .10% not 1%. .0008 is 8 in 10,000 not 1 in 100. My Dr's seem to think when they say "the odds of cancer with this drug is only X in 10,000" that it sounds low.
Comes out to be 32 out of their 40,000 inventory. Acceptable? Not really. Hopefully they fixed it.

I don't know about how many tainted items groceries expect but 8 out of 10,000 mislabeled cans may be acceptable.
Any tainted food would be a big deal to me being immune suppressed. Not having a nickel allergy it's mislabeling to me. I'm not sure, haven't seen reports of people vaping something with nickel having a hospitalizing reaction (I have seen reports of no issues vaping nichrome in spite of having nickel allergy). Most of what I've seen has been precautionary, you have a skin reaction to nickel, don't push your luck exposing your lungs to it. But I'm going to guess most people starting out with prebuilt cheap have vaped on nichrome (as I found out my RBA supplied wire was nichrome).
I don't even remember anyone thinking about it until Ni200 came about for TC.

Obviously you never worked in QC. That’s not how it works. It works in most manufacturing as the KP owner stated.

It’s not that there is no QC at KP, it’s that this was never an issue that needed protocols, and product went out bad.

Some specs are priority while others are not.

It’s a much broader topic than I can adequately say here, but every single thing that’s made has its own percentage of fails.

I manufactured windows (automotive). Some ran at 98%, others at 60%. There’s a lot more bad product than you might imagine. There well may be 1% failure in brakes, or greater. A lot of those fails did make it onto the streets, not so long ago. I imagine what went wrong was corrected somewhat in engineering and assembly, and most of what wasn’t fixed is caught before the car leaves the building.

But it’s not about how many run off the line wrong, it’s how many leave the plant that way.

They’ve discovered a problem, they’ve set up procedures to catch it. That’s how it works.

 

[DaveP]

Unless KP is loading their own proprietary spools from bulk rolls and getting it wrong the manufacturer markings should alert consumers that they received the wrong product. It would be inconvenient to get the wrong gauge or type, but a phone call could result in a righting of the wrong and the right part shipped.