Inverter turns off on computer with 18650
A vacuum could be drawing 15A or more at 120v (ac) from your inverter, that's 15A*120V = 1800W. The inverter must draw 1800W or more from your 12v battery to supply that. To pull 1800W from your 12V battery, it will have to supply 1800W/12V = 150A! This is probably well outside of it's capabilities.

So how many 18650s would you need to power a vacuum cleaner? Lets start with the figure of 1800W. These inverters appear to have an efficiency of around 85%. So we're actually going to need 1800W/0.85 = 2117W of input power. The 18650's also will not actually supply 12v, under load it's going to be more like 11v. That won't cause any issues, but the inverter will have to draw more current to compensate. This puts us at 2117W/11V = 192A. 18650's vary in max current rating, but lets say 7A continuous. I've seen ratings between 0.6A and 10A so definitely check that for your specific batteries. 192A/7A = 28 cells, aka 3s28p. If you add a 10% margin onto that you're at around 30 cells.

This 30 cell figure is based on the max current that each cell is rated to produce. Now what happens if you try to draw more than that? If you only use 14 cells you will be drawing around twice the rated current. This can causes a couple of things to happen.


If your battery has some kind of protection circuit built in it may trip, causing everything to shutdown.
The batteries may max out, causing the voltage to drop and the inverter to shutdown or hiccup.
The batteries may overheat or otherwise be damaged by the high current.


Note: we've only determined how many cells are required to run a vacuum at all. How long they will last is a whole other matter.