Constructors Corner.
Money, handbags, perfume, Rolex watches. Nothing is safe from being counterfeited it seems. Even electronic components!
In the last 12 months there has been an exponential rise in the amount of counterfeit electronic components being distributed in markets all over the world. No company is immune. Counterfeit electronics have turned up in every industrial sector, including computers, telecommunications, automotive electronics, avionics, and even military systems!
There are a number of ways the counterfeiters make fake components. The most popular seems to be sorting through scrap material to find similar components and then refinishing them. The world’s electronic scrap is collected and sent to a few Asian countries and China is one of them. There are warehouses full of workers who remove parts from circuit boards and sort them first by package type. Often they continue sorting them next by manufacturer and sometimes all the way down to the part number. Keep in mind that these workers are not using proper ESD precautions, nor were the parts protected from the elements on their journey to the warehouse. So even if they are the same part number the chances of them working properly are slim.
Opened up we see it contains a 35V 2200μf capacitor! So not only is the capacity less than a third what it is supposed to be but if you were to use it in a circuit with 50V it would probably explode, at best causing the equipment to fail, at worst causing a fire inside the equipment box.
Unfortunately, most companies are doing little to keep counterfeit parts out of their supply chains. Companies big and small say they can't afford to track the history of every part that goes into every board in every product they make. Indeed, many of the world's biggest manufacturers have been duped, in some cases putting fake or marginal parts into circuit boards that later failed and caused public relations nightmares. As the electronics supply chain grows more complex, with parts coming from many different suppliers all over the globe, it becomes even more difficult to police the problem. Meanwhile, the competitive pressure to slash manufacturing costs makes the trade in cheaper parts ever more attractive.
So where do the fake parts come from? Well China’s new (2003) export laws have resulted in an explosion of counterfeits, from complete equipment to components, hitting the market. The main reason for the recent change is that Chinese export laws now allow almost anyone to export. There are thousands of small electronic component shops, all stuffed to the brim with boxes of reels, trays and tubes of semiconductors. Equipment manufacturers are not helping the situation. The constant drive for lower production costs encourages buyers to go to new sources with lower prices. The distributors with high quality standards cannot match those who are taking high risks by buying in China. The low prices more often then not equate to substandard parts.
Three key factors are feeding the rise in bogus electronics:
So it boils down to the old "Buyer Beware". If sourcing components for that latest project or just an IC to fix that 'scope, cheapest is not always best!
For further information on detecting fake components see:
American Electronic Resource, Detection of Counterfeit Electronic Components page.