I'm an old PCB designer. Nowadays, most features hide behind encrypted software buried inside ASICs and EPROMs, but in the old days (circa 1985), we sometimes installed fake components connected to dead-end circuits to confuse anyone trying to reverse-engineer a critical product feature -- then 'cost-reduced' these parts away in later revisions.
That's fascinating. By any chance have you been following the development of Valve's Steam Deck? I was floored by how much simpler (cleaner) the newest motherboard layout is compared to the original, and I have a feeling my wonderment is only a fraction of what a pro PCB designer would be feeling.
that really isn't the same as this, i mean nowadays i doubt fake circuit paths even exist and so the fake components in the video on top of not being the same type of fake would also be exposed to the live circuit and ready to potentially fail causing real problems and not a simple headache
Haha, that is an interesting idea. Fortunately (or unfortunately?) we never did that. Nowadays the designs evolve so fast that you don't have time to copy them, nor money to waste in reverse-engineering teams (unless you really want some rocket science stuff). True story, we had many products with bugs that were blind-copied by competitors - they copied the bugs too! - and until they went to the market with their products, we had already a new version which was much improved, had more features, fixed the bugs, and it was cheaper. Even simple things, we made an industrial CPU module years ago, this type you insert into the main board in a socket similar to laptop RAM modules (align it to a "key", push it in and tilt it down towards the PCB), everything was working nice, but it had a "mechanical" bug, the slot for the key was a bit too large and if you would not align it properly in the socket then you could create a short circuit between some pins. Few months later some Chinese company made the same "mistake", they copied our modules mot-a-mot, and we heard of some of them letting the magic smoke out due to short circuits - they copied even the larger key slot and with their tolerances the issue was worse. Meantime we had a new module which was faster, had more memory, fixed the mechanical bug, and sold for only few bucks more.
Damn, to this day I'm still trying to reverse engineer one of your 1980's creations. Ha-Ha (jk) And what if the "transistor or chip tester" is fake too?! Wowwza
I can confirm this 100%. I was purchasing large amounts of common ic's gom a shady Shenzhen vendor and spoke to them about this. 90% of their stock were "b grade" equipment that didn't pass quality control that they purchased directly from the manufacturer to "recycle". Their idea of recycling was to sell at a very large discount. Some parts seemed to work just fine and be in spec. Very few were actually non functional. For fun projects they were a very cheap supply that worked just fine most of the time especially if you over spec your components.
It's not just shady markets, they find their way into the big name component distributors as well, because those places are just sales offices full of idiots who will do ANYTHING to get that promotion.
It surprises me they don't just take the ones that don't pass and label them as a different model, like Intel does with their CPUs. Intel test them all at slower and slower speeds until they hit one that is stable, and that's the speed that gets stamped on it and sold as. I would've assumed the same could be done with most components - figure out what signals, voltages and currents it can handle, find the next lowest model that meets those specs, and hey presto a reliable component - just maybe not the one you intended to make.
@@Berkeloid0 Well, CPUs cost 100s of USDs, so wasting each CPU that doesn't work costs a pretty penny. Whereas, electrical components take cents to manufacture per piece(most not all), and the amount is so great, that they can't perform such an intensive procedure on each component, so they just `Recycle` it.
I worked in an office that shared space with an electronics manufacturer with military contracts. The lunchroom TVs would play "How to Spot A Fake Component" on loop for hours. Can you imagine the repercussions if something like a sonar buoy or radar system started glitching and giving false positives? Or if the GPS system started lying to you? It's literally the beginning of several Bond movies.
Batch approval testing is the only way. See the video from RCA "The reasosn Why". They run tests on EVERY BATCH received prior sending them to the production line. We used to buy Motorola transistors to the OFFICIAL representative here and one time all the tested modules failed one after the other the production tests. The opened the TO-3 thing .... surprise ....... it was the die of a T220 if not smaller. We called them and treatened to contact Motorola offices directly to inform that. The change the lot inmediatly no questions. OFFICIAL MOTOROLA RESELLER !!!!! Issue with our crap was, it pushed the hell out of the transistor ..... fakes will blow inmediately.
When I was a teenager in the early 1970's, I spent several glorious years working for a local electronic component shops building all sorts of Diode testers, transistor testers, MOSFET testers, 74 series logic testers, 555 timer testers, even vacuum tube testers...... I had a great time.
I've been stung with fakes, both with mosfets and PIC micros. The mosfets ran hotter than they should, so resistance was higher. I also had issues loading data to the PICs. However some fakes worked just fine. As you say, it's the luck of the draw.
@@hamzakhanrajput7881 Every component is just a black box. If you know what pin does what, you can easily fake it. It may not have same specs as original component, but it will be similar enough.
A pic cannot be easily faked it is not "just a component" it is an MCU. But I have had STM32s being delivered as empty shells. No silicon inside, just the plastic housing with pins. They even did the effort of putting real ones in the top tray, so we could test it.
@@hamzakhanrajput7881 It may not be fake. It could be a defective part that failed some of the production tests. You just never know for sure if acquired from untrusted sources.
@@hamzakhanrajput7881 ase explained in the video, by using rejects, or relabeling cheaper pic of the same family. It's not a reverse-engineering, it's a scam, so they don't need to work or be exact copies
On that last test, it is important to point out that you may not want a super fast ramping speed as it can cause more noise in your circuit. Slower slew rates affect the power supply rails less as well.
The tester is good for quickly weeding out DOA parts or parts that are grossly mis labeled - caught one seller (out of dozens) who sent me transistors reprinted as mosfets. A picture of the part in the tester was all I need to win a "item not as described" claim.
In my experience, especially with boxed assortments, the components are scavenged, or bought in waste lots from manufacturers. You are almost as likely to end up with higher spec, higher performing components as you are bad ones. As you noticed with the opamp. "Cheaply sourced' can mean a lot of things. Awlays profile the important components.
Thats interesting because I've bought diy kits from AliExpress, Ebay, and Bangood. So far a few kits have had DOA LEDs. Missing components. ICs that could be faulty. I bought two AC adaptors one of which had fluctuating voltage. Opened it up and the internal mainboard didn't appear to be new. I checked a half dozen SMD resistors all gave faulty readings. I looked at the mainboard and components. It appears to be dust or sediment on one side. Were these ac adaptors flood damaged? I would almost wager thats what happened. It appears that way. On left side all the caps are brand new. On the other side the electrolytic caps look old! Aside from that everything else has worked still who really knows. Issues my pop up in the future. I'm not the worried about it. It's just a hobby for me and if it's cheap it's good. I bought 5 ICs for $2.50 AU not even expecting them to arrive but they actually did arrive. What can you buy for $2.50? I can't even buy a coffee for that price.
@@decem_unosquattro9538 Try searching for products that don't claim to be made in US. For example you don't want a TI mosfet for cheap, but you can expect something similar from a Chinese brand for one tenth the price, and it will meet its datasheet perfectly. (Just looked up about it, we still have to catch up on high-performance mosfets, but for small ones you can safely buy cheap ones that come in bags of 50)
@@yuxuanhuang3523 I'm not so concerned about whether components meet exact values of course it would be nice if they did. I do electronics as a hobby. If the price is extremely cheap then that's good. I guess in time I'll buy better quality because it lasts longer and is more reliable. Not much point buying cheap but it fails quickly. If too many components fail I'll buy from reputable outlets. You Chinese need to improve quality. Batteries are particularly bad in this regard. Samsung batteries are supremely good whereas Chinese batteries from my own experience just aren't that good.
Yup. I've even come across fakes in surplus Radioshack assortments. And the 2N3055s I got from my assortment from Elenco had white epoxy over the die, which when removed revealed a much smaller die than I've seen in other pictures. So in that case, it could be they just toss whatever transistor die they have lying around that's close enough, it seems. Because I don't see any other reason the would manufacture 3055s with a smaller die for any reason. Seems like a lot of work to make a penny. But I guess they can still automate the process of putting the fake die in the to-3 package. So it might not be as much work as I think.
Its a huge problem att work. We have had faked IGBTer and high performance DIODs. And yea thats a huge issue, they burned up in testing.Its a huge problem att work. We have had faked IGBTer and high performance DIODs. And yea thats a huge issue, they burned up in testing.
Thanks for this. As a beginner I've used components which have confused me by not working as expected and because I'm a beginner my natural conclusion is that I've done something wrong. Which is really demoralising if you think you've done the correct thing. Knowing that fake/dodgy components is a real issue, this actually gives me some hope to try a couple of failed applications again(with better components!)
Also double check data sheets. Some manufacturers like to reverse pins for some reason. I had the hardest time getting a transistor to work until I flipped it around, which was the opposite of what every data sheet showed.
As a hobbyist, it’s actually sometimes cheaper to use fake components for testing (eg arduinos) as I know I’m gonna blow a couple anyways, then use original on the final part.
No it's not. Testing with fake components is real stupid because when there is an issue, you don't know if it due to mistake in design, assembly or because of components. If you need cheap components just buy cheap Chinese components that do not pretend to be something else from LCSC. The problem with fake components is that for the same price or even lower price you can buy genuine Chinese components that perform up to spec and have a datasheet. Why would you buy only hell knows what disguised as Texas instruments LM358 when you can buy real LM358 from Chinese manufacturer for $ 0.03?
@@woopsserg Other components you may be right about, but from my experience with microcontrollers and similar modules, as long as it works, its good enough for prototyping (university robotics projects etc) and only once we have the final design down we stick an original Arduino on it, as it is very easy to burn/kill the Arduino if wired or configured incorrectly during the testing process. To put in context, cheap Arduino clones cost 2-3 USD, while the original goes from 15-20 USD. and we blow through 3-4 easily during testing. that's 12 USD for Chinese and 40 USD for original. What would you rather spend if you knew you were gonna burn a couple components anyways?
@@neelkanthgovindji1173 Arduino clone or other cloned device being cheap does not necessarily mean it's built from fake components, and I wrote about components only. "As long as it works" until it does not. Again, what I said why in hell would you buy fake cat in the sack garbage rather than just cheap genuine components? Also fake opamp, MOSFET or 7805 vreg working in one circuit does not mean it will do the same in another.
@@neelkanthgovindji1173 Also people buy Chinese buck converter modules based on fake LM2596 that is not even close to original (5 times lower switching frequency). All while they can get cheaper modules based on genuine MPxxxx ICs (MP1584 for example) that are smaller, heat less and output more current with less ripple. Fake does not mean cheap, it means you are probably overpaying for what it actually is even when it's dirt cheap.
@@woopsserg They are made from fake / clone components such as the USB to serial chip on the Arduino's, the voltage regulators (AMS1117) are regularly failing if you supply anything apart from 5v (while the spec sheet says it can handle up to 12-20v), and many other things we have observed. Hell sometimes even the ATMEGA chip is not what it says, you will get ATMega168 and not 328, and even then its a process to get it to work because the memory is less and the bootloader is different. As for buying alternative cheaper components, maybe I can do that for my projects but at the end of the day its not easy for everyone to research say an alternative mosfet to what they are using that they can find a reliable supplier for and be able to modify the use case to accommodate for the differences in the alternative component, it may be easy, it may be not. For a professional use case, it is easy to say just use xxx and yyy instead of zzz. But for small time engineers and hobbyists, we have to make do with that we find. So in that case it is easier and cheaper to prototype and test with fakes even if I might face some issues or have to change out failed components. And as soon as the project is finalized, you can use the usual off the shelf original components.
the problem is consistency. you can buy great "fake" components the 1st time and crap the 2nd time, even from the same seller. you never know what you're going to get until you get it. even in the same stock, there can be great and bad fake components, and you should test them all. it can be fine for a hobbyist, but as long as they don't complain on social media afterward if they've gotten a rip-off (that's part of the risk)
You have hit the nail on the head with this comment. It's difficult to know and, most of the time, the suppliers are also the victims as they aren't aware that they were supplied with fakes either. I have had a situation where a component was obviously a fake (Literally identified itself as a fake) so I contacted the supplier directly rather than leaving bad feedback since I had been buying good quality gear from them for several years. They were a little defensive at first and asked for evidence ( I'm sure people often blow things up then scream fake ). I sent them the evidence that I had and they accepted it very apologetically and offered a refund. I did not bother as it was not worth a lot of money and it was just for their benefit that I had contacted them. I have since purchased a lot more gear from this supplier and they are still my most trusted supplier. A complaint on social media would not have been of any benefit to either of us. I would always recommend the first course of action is to contact the supplier prior to providing any negative feedback.
Let you guys know one of my personal experiences - some cheap DC-DC modules can still "work properly" at 200 Celsius/degrees when the output current reachs 3A. They won't automatically shutdown as they just don't have a thermal-resistor. One of them melted through my 3D printed case, and reached my carpet. Lucky my home switchboard stopped the further damage.....
The other source of counterfeit components is from extra shifts at the foundry in China. The same labor gets used, but the original company makes no profit because they’re sold onto the black market. QA gets skipped as well since that would reduce the profit of the pirates, accounting for more variability in quality.
It often happens after the contract has been fulfilled. When a company outsources manufacturing to somewhere like Guangdong they often find the costs will start to creep up after the first couple of production runs, so they shop around and then part ways when they find somewhere cheaper. Often the factories will initially absorb the cost of the tooling and die manufacture to win the contract, so they actually own the equipment to make the parts but they just don't own the right to make the actual product. IP isn't really something Chinese manufacturers worry about so once the customer cuts ties with them they keep on operating. The plant is already set up for it and there will always be left over raw materials after a run, so there is very little upfront cost involved. If they do need to purchase raw materials, there will always be cheaper lower quality options available. Add that to the lack of QA and you now have the typical counterfeit product. Sometimes they may assemble and package offsite to keep it low key. The only way to prevent it is to purchase the product dies or ensure the tooling and dies are destroyed after manufacturing ceases (never 100% guarantee) or to build and run the factory yourself. (many difficult barriers to overcome).
Yeah, we made a rope to hang ourselves onto by moving most of manufacturing to China 3 decades ago. Once Nortel was out, our college electronic courses also disappeared and the quality of computer technology courses also suffered.
Which is something the "OEM" companies know is going to happen .... they just don't care because they love getting the cheap manufacturing from these foundry "partners".
@@greatscottlab yes it can be a huge problem in high power circuitry because most of the faked component's maximum ratings differ from datasheet but most of the time they have same response.
The worst scenario is when you buy a "genuine" device like a Samsung charger, it fails after 1 year, you disassemble it and you find out that wasn't a genuine product. It happened to me, the layout of the PCB was like the "genuine" one, but some components like the power mosfet from the mains side was only a piece of plastic with no connection from its pads. The driver ic was different (power mosfet included in the same die)... rectifying diode too... a cheap charger, made exactly like the genuine product. I've paid the price of a genuine one. My mistake was that i haven't kept the receipt. Even the engraved numbers on the plastic case are the same...
Yeah I think this happens when a big company (like samsung) moves it's manufacturing elsewhere - but all the factory equipment stays there. So it is trivial for someone to scoop up the factory, keep half the workers, cut as many expensive parts out as possible and then churn out cheap near identical knockoffs for a quick buck.
I've bought "genuine" replacement Samsung earbuds (the sort that used to come free with phones) and found that they don't even get the pinout right. One ear had reversed polarity, in all of them
Some of these fakes might not be fakes at all, the font and print differences are the least important part of the manufacturing especially if the original manufacturer licenses the production of a component or if they subcontract the production
Also different factories can use package from different source. There are also changes to the package in time due to different suppliers, new ROHS materials etc. Just as datasheets get new revisions, the mosfets do as well. Factory rejects are a huge factor too.
@@peatmoss4415 Yes, but what he wanted to tell is that you shouldn't solely rely on the casing. You have to test them to find out, if they're fake. Maybe they changed the placement of the text, the way the text is engraved onto the chip, used different molds for the casing, ... It's at least pretty difficult if you have to find fake chips in a convolut of genuine chips with totally different manufacturing dates, if you would try to find them without testing
While marking difference is the real thing as genuine part can be manufactured by multiple factories and over long time period with process changes, it's wishful thinking than those cheap ebay parts from China may be genuine. Your best bet for them is to be recycled e-waste.
@@woopsserg This is absolute nonsense. If parts are cheap they must be fake? The parts cost the same as genuine parts in wholesale/bulk quantity. They are located close to the manufacturing factories. There's nothing inherently unbelievable about cheap parts. Maybe you should learn Chinese so you have some idea of what you're painting with a single brush.
The component industry relies on contract fab houses to make a lot of their parts. It is possible that your name brand part and clone part are made in the same place with the same materials and equipment. It could also be the design specs and details for the real part were transferred after dark to different fab for cloning. I buy parts on ebay only as a last resort and have had no trouble. Much to my surprise.
I'm guessing that the most common source of fakes are factory rejected originals that were supposed to be scrapped because they didn't meet the test specifications. Instead of being scrapped, they are collected and labeled off site and resold. Once that sales path is established, you can imagine the factory workers that are coordinating this scam might tweak the yield numbers for each batch a bit and "reject" perfectly good devices too, just to have more free throw-away parts to collect and resell, resulting in parts that ARE original and in-spec sold for cheap.
The last time I bought components from an unreliable source was when I got 2 "LM338" regulators that were just two series resistors in a TO-220 package
There can be many ways to "fake" silicon, and it is very hard for a hobbyist to test for every scenario. So now 95% of my parts come from authorized distributors and even sometimes directly thru the manufacturer, even for critical res and caps. The fakes I can think of: - sanded and re-marked packages - factory rejects - cloned designs - 3rd shifts / ghost shifts, where it would've been a genuine part if the fab put the parts under normal QC.
The difference between the markings and leadframe are not necessarily showing fake / counterfeit. Former International Rectifier (now Infineon) builds parts in several factories. Each may have slightly different cosmetic but the spec and reliability are equivalent
Well, many (the most??) of the fake electronic components don't come from the sources you mention, but are factory rejects, or "low binning". Mosfets, transistors, etc., but especially capacitors and LEDs. I used to work in a factory in China for few years, at the end of the last century, and it was like that, the customer placed order for 10k of device X, he was quoted 10 times the price (but he knew, and it was still cheaper to him than producing the device locally), so we produced 100k, then he came with his engineers and testers and tested all 100k, chose the best 10k, the rest were earmarked for burning. But the Chinese people are good entrepreneurs... For the last 20+ years I am working in electronic manufacturing business in south-east Asia too, but outside of China, and when it comes to buying components, especially capacitors or LEDs, we have to make a very tough IQC. Such components always come from binning (edit: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning#Semiconductor_manufacturing), because the factory can not control the production process, they just make millions and sort them. Ceramic caps come out of PD line anything like plus or minus 50% of capacitance, and are sorted in bins, respective the LEDs are sorted (sometimes in a hundred different bins) by frequency (color, especially for yellow/orange, 590nm, where few nm are important, it will be reddish or greenish if the tolerances slip), forward voltage, brightness - five levels of each, and you have already 125 bins - you can buy them very cheap if you can live with all bins, but if you only want between 589 and 591 nm, with forward voltage between 1.8 and 2.0V, and specific millicandela brightness (otherwise your matrix display will look like sh!t), then you either buy all and sort them by yourself, and scrap (or resell cheap) the failed ones, or you buy only one bin, you pay 125 times the price, because the vendor will claim he can not sell the rest, and then guess what he will do with the rest? Scrap them? neeee...
If the price for resources would be as high as their actual (ecological) price, then it would be cheaper to optimize the processes rather than producing n-times as much. However in our capitalistic world, the true price does not matter, so the second way is the way many will take...
@@Otto_Heiskanen I am a VERY fast typist, it takes longer to proof read it than to type it, because I always make some mistakes that need fixing (not a native speaker), of which few still escape every time - the mistakes are cleverer than us.
It seems like cheap components are actually the same device but probably the methods of manufacture are very much cheapened which introduces less consistency amongst the final products. Fair enough in my eyes. It would be interesting to test multiple "original" ones to see if they give variability.
Often your cheap or fake are remarked or overstock items. The overstock can be anything, and the remark definitely anything, so even if you buy a pack of 10 you might find all 10 are totally different, only thing in common is the package looked the same, so they were all blacktopped and remarked. Some things are simply just old equipment being run to the last, things like resistors are ok provided you are not too critical of things like tolerance and stability, but for parts like capacitors best to stick to genuine parts, as the fakes are literally anything in the same size can, and the polarity is often suspect on them as well. Cheap parts be prepared to test each one before use to see if it is somewhere within the tolerance of the genuine one first.
most of the fake active devices were simply re-marked instead of a cheap clones. there's also refurbished device which came from recycles where the leads were simply re-tinned or cut and weld a new leads
It's common practice in many cases to put components through QA, and the ones that don't quite make the cut get down-badged. For instance, I heard an anecdote where one factory making transistor radios would sell the exact same radio to three different vendors, with the only difference being the allowable tolerances on the finished product. The cream of the crop went to a name brand vendor, and the bottom dregs went to an el-cheapo fly by night operation.
Even finished devices like solid-state-relays can be remarked or relabeled. I have a few SSRs marked as 50 amp that are actually 15 amp devices with a new label put on.
Thank you for spending the time to share about such, for the hobbyist certain components don't really matter as long as we can make our prototype projects before splashing out on better and certified components , so for the fake stuff well it has its purpose (cheap, small purchases, don't have to be a company) But on a commercial side , well only a fool would buy from a uncontrolled source like Ebay and amazon and so. And to say this is why companies that certify their parts/products charge more. you get better quality and safety. Anyway im glad that there is a cheaper option, but i do tend to buy mainly from a proper component company.
Very timely and important video! Thanks for this reminder. This is _really serious_ stuff, where failure and fault tolerance is critical and in some applications, lives may be genuinely at risk!
As a beginner in the hobby, I also found this out the hard way. I bought all my components through ali because the shipping costs are much lower. not knowing that even 10-cent components are counterfeited. I now only buy them through the more famous dealers because otherwise I really have no confidence in them. Only buy a lot less now because of the high shipping costs.
I just underrate my components by 50% and have never run into a problem. Real or fake, running components anywhere near their rating always produces a product called "cheap consumer grade garbage". If I only have to derate by 50%, but the component is 80% cheaper, I win.
I have a couple of eBay sellers who I trust, but I only buy components like resistors, leds and diodes from them, stuff that would otherwise have high minimums and high shipping and still be "generic" if I bought from an electronics distributor
Thats a problem I have too. Legit sources are setup to cater to large corporations with huge orders to fill huge production runs. So shipping costs on smaller orders is exhorbitant to the extreme. Hence I and so many others are driven to cheaper suppliers & end up getting burned with fakes.
it’s very difficult to validate a component by testing it. The spec sheets usually specify average and worst case values. But in any given lot of semiconductors there’s quite a lot of variability, and it’s only the ones that don’t meet their spec that get tossed. Ones that beat their spec are considered OK unless the spec has a guaranteed minimum and maximum, which many don’t. It’s far better to just buy your components from a reliable source like Mauser/Digikey in the US, Avnet/Arrow/Rutronik in the EU, or their counterparts in other countries. If you are just buying parts for hobby use it’s fine to buy parts from eBay, but I never put them in anything I care about.
Yep. Basically this approach. Not to say that they haven't been conned a few times either I'm sure; also I've seen/bought plenty from Mouser that was uh...definitely not worth what they charged and looked little better than what I could buy on ebay. Probably knobs and connectors come to mind; those places ought to be ashamed of themselves. 7.50 for a plastic knob, Mouser? HOWEVER lol...things like capacitors, high wattage resistors, ALL actives (with exception to maybe lamps or leds), just go the safe route and buy from places that...they may gouge on some stuff (or pack things idiotically like Newark does lol), but hey at least you KNOW you're safe from this issue.
I have come across fake IGBT modules working on AC variable frequency drives. They labels claim they block 1200V, but I've found many that fail and break over at around 800V. They use PWM on a DC bus typically charged to around 650V to control 3 phase induction motors. The amount of energy these modules control is massive, and when they exceed their blocking voltage, they fail shorted, dumping all of the stored energy in the capacitors in a very spectacular plasma ball. Normally this only happens when customers try to repair their own stuff. Actual modules are very expensive (especially when you need minimum 6 of them), so they often opt for the cheap alternatives, not knowing these alternatives may be fake, remanufactured, or even defective out of the box.
Fake electronic parts are not just a problem if you buy cheap stuff on Ebay. I'm currently employed by a rather big heatpump and water heater manufacturer in germany. The semiconductor shortages are really hitting us hard and we had to convert to other chips and diverge from our regular ways of sourcing components to be able to keep up the production. So some parts are sourced from brokers we never worked with before and it had happened that we got counterfit microcontrollers. It's unknown where those fu**ers "infested" the supply chain. Luckily our QC for incoming goods checks every incoming batch of material and discovered the fake chips. For first deliverys from a new supplyer and every so often they even go as far as making die shots. I allways tought that was overkill, but now I know it better...
Acetone (nail polish remover) is a great way to test if the component is relabeled. Apply to a cotton swab and try to remove the markings in the component. If the component is re-painted, the acetone will dissolve the paint and reveal the original markings. I'm not sure if this is a common problem with components that are still in production, but it very much is a problem for older ICs like 6502 processors and EPROMs.
I have ended up with eproms that were fake and did not have as much capacity as they should have had. I can't remember what they were supposed to be or what they were cause it was a few years back, but I remember being very confused as to what was happening.
I've had good and bad questionably sourced components in the past too. A lot of them might not totally meet spec, but they're good enough. If I can get "good enough" for 1/10 the price of the original, that's not a bad thing. I do prefer that the "good enough" folks just sell them under their own names. They're doing the counterfeit markings, so they can get the sales. People will (almost) always prefer the name brand over some random source. But if that random source is like you saw, being better or more cost effective than the brand name, I want to buy theirs again in the future. That's how respected brand names become respected. They'll never really succeed if no one ever knows who they are. And if they're selling under a respected brand name, so are a bunch of other companies. They make more sales, but not as many as they could. I don't know what the fix for them would be, to get them from "better quality startup" to "industry leader". That's hard to do, and it takes a ton of marketing money to even get close to great sales.
In my experience there are many "good enough" parts already sold under their own brands and part numbers. I see this regularly when trying to look up part numbers from inexpensive boards, and the datasheet is difficult or impossible to find online with maybe only one web hit from a Chinese website that mentions the particular part number as the correct type of component at all. For the many inexpensive electronic products sold on eBay and Ali Express, there is a whole sub-industry of cheaper ICs being produced to go into them. In those cases you won't see counterfeit parts made to look like top name brands (Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, etc.) but harder to find part numbers from lower cost countries.
LCSC can be a good source for a lot of the Chinese-brand parts that you see in cheap electronics (and that are hard to find for sale outside of China), as well as the sort of "good enough and a fraction of the price" components discussed in this thread. They also stock a lot of "western" brands, but I've found a lot of those to be more expensive at LCSC than at Digi-key/Arrow/Mouser/etc 🤷♀️ I haven't done enough with parts ordered from them to give a _meaningful_ review in terms of quality of parts, but I've never had an issue with them. My biggest complaint is that their website's product filtering functionality left a lot to be desired, making it really tedious to discover components that meet your requirements. It always felt like there were some great products hiding somewhere in a 200-page list, but I couldn't effectively use filters to find them (like I could with, e.g., Digi-key) without checking the specs of thousands of parts one-by-one... However, it's been about 4 years since I've ordered from LCSC - or any other electronics distributor - so hopefully they've improved their website in the meantime!
I would happily buy clones sold as clones with listed, lower specs than I would pay 10X for genuine TI or whatever components. 99% of the time I just need something that works, and if a chinese company can field some home grown products that are close to the specs, I'd rather buy that than buy "refurbished" (read: pulled from a dead board, sanded down and reengraved) genuine chips
A few months back I wanted to get into breadboard guitar pedals, and I ordered everything on aliexpress. I can't count the amount of times where I felt like an idiot because even the simpliest circuits wouldn't work, only to find out that the problem was the garbage quality of the components. I found that resistor and capacitors usually work as intended, but transisors and opamps would either not work at all or work for a couple of minutes
My experiences are the same as yours. I would build the same build only to find out they weren't working. I thought I was horrible at soldering or doing something wrong. Come to find out, it was the IC's that weren't working. I totally can relate.
@@yummyklown9226 It is always good to choose not the cheapest one on the AliExpress, they also get quicker to you. The other tell when you already get them is that the good ones are in factory packing cut-off piece of roll, while the maybe fake ones you get in bulk in a zip bag. Another option is to choose a reputable CN IC producer instead of a probable copy of a US product. The problem there is that not many Chinese IC producers have datasheets in English. My only mishap and it was a module, not a component, that LM2596 blew up, really broken into a few pieces, while working, after about a seven months. That one is one of about 200 step-up/down modules I have used, the other which is more technology-oriented is that OLED display modules lose brightness much quicker than western components, but also cost 10x less.
Another issue with fake parts is the reliability. Had multiple counterfeit voltage regulators randomly go bad within a few months and pass the input voltage directly to the output, despite them never running too hot, out of spec, etc. Replaced with a genuine one without any other changes and it was fine for years.
I buy a lot of components from eBay suppliers, but I only would use them for my experiments, where they are not critical. I suspect many of the "working" components are actually similar but cheaper components that have smaller maximum voltage or current ratings etc so if you are not pushing their limits you may never notice. But if I was making a circuit to actually use in an application where failure would be inconvenient or dangerous, I would always source them from a reputable supplier. Cheap components are great for trying out ideas though. One thing to watch however is buying rare or "popular" components -- replacement chips for retro computers are a minefield at the moment. Its too easy to take any 40 pin DIP chip, relable it as a 6510 or a VIC chip and sell it for 10 times the cost of the original part - which might even be a faulty or empty chip. By the time the buyer finds out, the seller has disappeared with the money.
8 ago when I started electronics I was building simple circuits such as making an adjustable power supply using an adjustable linear regulator, the LM317. I bought them from ebay for around $2 10pcs and oh my, it was a mistake. The problem I had was the potentiometer to adjust the output voltage blowing up which occured when having a load at the output, I thought I did a mistake back then, I took hours of searching the issue, I even went on a forum to discuss about my problem. Then days later I thought it was a bad batch so I decided to buy some more from another place, once I received them they worked as expected without the pot blowing. This is when I concluded I bought fake regulators at the first place. I was curious what the die looked like so I smashed one of them and managed to get a glimpse of it, I've then compared with online pictures and I was surprised to find out that the die was at least 4 times smaller than genuine regulators... There is a video on TH-cam named "LM317T - Fake and real" which exactly shows what I had.
I was faced with exactly the same issue a few years ago: very simple VARIABLE power supply using LM317-T0220 "branded ST" burned the potentiometers (5 trials !) and eventually ended themselves as dead short, with load current much lower than 1A. But they were OK when used at fixed voltage (ie with a resistor divider), i didn't understand why ...
Sometimes the ones you get cheap from Chinese sellers are actually from the original manufacturer, but fall out of spec; so they're "real", just the rejects, which may have been sold to a 3rd party under the table, just to recoup some losses on them. But I think it only really matters if you have real or fake [the ones that are actually the same type of component and work similarly, if not in spec] if you're doing something mission critical... or high power applications, where there is more of a chance of fire
@@user-qr6gf2tm6x probably! It makes sense both from an ecological and business perspective to sell as much of what you produce as you can, and minimize what goes into a landfill.
In his video the "original" and the "fake" do the same thing, and have the same properties when measured. So... how are they fake exactly? They're just simple components, like getting screws or nails. I'd always go for the cheaper ones, no reason to pay extra for something like this. Sure, some might fail or be a tiny bit out of spec, who cares, they're cheap - and this can also happen with the expensive ones. The more expensive price tag is an illusion that makes you think they're better quality, or they're built with different procedures - they're not. As for Chinese sellers, yeah, why not get them from them? They're all built there anyway, including your "real" expensive ones, so I don't see the problem. And since they're all built there, I'd argue the "original" components are the ones you get straight from China. They're cheap, as they should, without the Bezos tax and you're helping the actual workers instead of making Bezos's mega-yacht bigger.
@@StupidusMaximusTheFirst for most applications it probably makes no difference. Like, if you buy 5% class resistors and the ones you get actually can be up to like 5.5% +/-, it probably won’t make a difference. Or if a 5V regulator puts out 5.08V instead of 4.99-5.01 or whatever the spec is. Maybe some extra rejects, but for hobbyists, and buying in bulk… definitely not a big deal
The thing with those testers are so cheap that, they will probably be using cheap fake components themselves, so I wonder how reliable the results will be?
They're really neat for what they are, but not very accurate. Especially poor at testing power devices because they can't source much current/voltage to the DUT. But still quite useful for a quick and dirty test.
Thanks for making this video, for me it did exactly what you intended: Raising awareness. I was under the impression that these electrical components are not really messed around with, because they have to follow guidelines, etc. I thought there are just different companies making the same components with small differences, but i didn't think there were actual fakes that don't even try to deliver what was needed. But I guess you only need to avoid really sketchy looking stuff, like random stuff on ebay, with unknown seller, bad description and extremely cheap ones. Because it seems like the bigger sellers, like this Bojack stuff you got there, is "close enough". They sell on amazon too (on ebay they don't have any product ratings for some reason) but if they were garbage that doesn't deliver or even burns, I'm sure they would have a ton of 1 star ratings, of people calling out the bad products.
@@John-oo9bu One of them is likely to be whatever Element 14 Group calls themselves in your country. It could be something like CPC Farnell (UK) or Newark Electronics (USA/Canada).
@@katbryce Newark sounds familiar. I just remember that anytime we needed to look something up, we would be told to go get one of the two books.. Thank you.
What a great time to be alive. Given all the less expensive testers, components, etc. that were very expensive, if not unaffordable except to big businesses years ago, we can truly enjoy electronics as a hobby. I really like this video. It gives solid insight as to quality of "fake" components. I was taught in college years ago to always-always test your components. The few minutes it takes to check them (fake or not) will save hours of headache later when someone has to test them in circuit and spend time soldering to replace defective ones. Even a new resistor could be bad and hard to pin down once in a circuit. Thank you for the video.
I bought some NE5532 from our chinese friends. Turns out that they were all fake. I guess these are relabeled LM358. They are working fine as an opamp but have a really bad crossover distortion. Same happened for a bunch of TL072. You can easily check if the NE5532 are original, cause they have two protection diodes between the positive and negative input. But for the TL072 you are lost 🙂 Those OPs are working, but you should not use them in an audio setup. You will receive bad crossover distortions. But for, lets say, a rectifier or something else, they could be perfectly used. So i recommend to buy parts at a reasonable seller like Mauser, Digikey or in Germany Reichelt.
I've come to the conclusions that probably 90% of the stuff I bought from aliexpress is fake garbage. Packaging often gives it away as these things are sold to make a quick buck, the people behind don't even try and simply rely on the fact that you cannot see the product until it has arrived to you. Molding is supposed to be uniform with a distinct matte finish, however quite some opamps I've do have a suspicious grinding pattern on top. Some comes with packaging pre-melted as if someone has cooked them before shipping.
Too true. On top of that their "dispute" system is rigged against the paying customer. I was recently ripped off on an emprom programmer, not a fake but a bait n switch scam. Had to do a chargeback on the credit card to get my money back. That site n its ilk are nothing more than the online version of "Vinny the fence"
I was once building a transmitter and getting not fake components was essential. But of course I first bought fake ones, until I got a recommendation where to buy.
if its the same product, even if its 'fake', i'll run it through some testing. if it holds up for what i need, i'll use it. if not, i'll keep looking. so far, i've been pretty lucky.
I once ordered a bunch of SPI NOR Flash Chips and got a good deal. They were sold as "new". On arrival I read out every single one and there were prewritten with some chinese Router Firmware. I contacted the seller and got to keep the parts while getting my money back. So now I always check my parts once I receive them.
We have seen a multi-storey mall in shenzhen China selling used parts such as motherboard chipsets, lan card chipset, vga chipset, even tan. caps. Selling used parts is a big market.
I had this problem when I bought 10 Mosfets (IRF540) on ebay to build the zvs that you designed. 7 did work fine but 2 just blew up and 1 didn't do anything
Just because there is difference in the labeling/package it doesn't necessary mean its fake. A component can have name facture sources and each facture can have a different packaging process. For a recent example Noctua fans manufactured on Chine and Taiwan have a slight different plastic color.
Actually i think the gate threshold voltage is the most important value next to the on resistance. It happened to me that a airsoft motor driver constantly blew up with 2 lipo cells because they didn't open up fully when the motor spun up. Replacements from Conrad fixed it.Actually i think the gate threshold voltage is the most important value next to the on resistance. It happened to me that a airsoft motor driver constantly blew up with 2 lipo cells because they didn't open up fully when the motor spun up. Replacements from Conrad fixed it.
We've once bought a batch of TLP923 opto IGBT drivers. Turns out they were some op-amps relabeled as optos. It was quite a loud boom when we powered a 30kW inverter after fitting new IGBT blocks and new "optos".
I would love to see a big Testvideo where you compare different types of fake products with the original ones and not only one specimen of each type. I hope for nice scientific graphics (scatter plots) like CNCkitchen provides in his testvideos. I would expect the fake ones to be manufactured in a similar way but they use also the bad one from a batch and sell them to lower the overall product price.
It's a bit questionable how useful this video, or even the suggested statistics would be. The cheaper components, for whatever reason (bad lot, begin/end-of-run batches, clones, etc.) probably have not been filtered with the same testing as the more expensive ones, i.e. they failed some test or were regarded as lesser just due to something known about their manufacture. This likely varies greatly for each device you see on ebay or wherever-- some might be just fine, others not, and there's no correlation from one device to the next, so statistics for one are not going to suggest much about the others. All you know is "the cheap ones are less likely to be fall within the expected performance range," but you won't ever know how often, or by how much they vary.
@@stephens1393 many times if you decap them you see they are not even the same architecture as the original. It one thing to be a clone and be a poorly manufactured one and its completely different to be a product made to act like one just to fool the customer.
@@lunacyworks I guess it _would_ be useful to know, when you buy from an unknown source off of E-bay or Amazon, the rough percentages on the likelihood that you're going to receive a 1. genuine part, 2. a genuine or equivalent part with larger variation in specs, or 3. a completely different/inferior part with out-of-spec behavior. It's _interesting_ to see examples of completely different parts "under the hood," but it's only actually useful if you can get an idea of how often something will go wrong if you order from these places. Otherwise this video is (or at least could be) just sensationalized click-bait playing on paranoia. How often have _you_ received a fake/inferior part? Is your experience just anecdotal, or the norm?
I'm almost certain that practically all of my components are fake :D The only ones that I know aren't fake are the microcontrollers and the components I've salvaged from broken brand-name devices.
@@satunnainenkatselija4478 Most probably not. Those are all more or less reliable sources. Of course, there is always a chance some fakes got through, but I wouldn't worry in your case I, on the other hand, often but on eBay and AliExpress, so I very certainly have lots of fakes.
4:54 You connected the scope probes without ground lead. For signals in the ns range this is a bad setup. You basically characterized your measurement setup (incl. the overshoot and ringing), not your FET. For proper scope measurements, always connect all ground leads, i.e., for each probe in use, connect its ground lead.
The most important takeaway from this is ALWAYS test your components if you are going to rely on them for anything serious or market ready. Even samples that are genuine can be missed by testing, if even tested at all. This is particularly true if you have very specific tolerances or requirements, or doing weird exotic things like the recent flexible PCBs that are still very hit or miss with consistency.
I'm an electronics engineering student and recently my classmates and I were doing a practical work with logic gates, measuring their electrical characteristics. It was an odyssey because apparently the logic gates that we were using didn't work properly, and some of them didn't work at all or worked as a different logic gate. All of this happened because we were trying to save some money, but in the end, we had to spend more money to get what we supposed were original components. In my country, it is sometimes difficult to afford or find original or highly reliable components due to the economic situation not being as good as it was in the past.
Simply because the low value most will not try to get a refund, so it is profitable to sell a lot of cheap parts and get small amounts of money in. If the 10 $1 parts you got are fake most will simply order from somebody else. Thus if your fake cost you 10c, marking 10c, postage 30c you made 50c profit, compared to the real one where the part cost 50c, so you only made 20c. Small sellers not likely to get repeat customers, so selling the fake part, often bought in from another seller who got them for 1c, and sold for 10c, to multiple others, is profitable. Might be QC fails, might be dead off the line, and dumpster dived out the plant, or run as a ghost shift for sale off the books, you never know.
Had a suspicious case recently in a prosumer Canon photo printer : PSU failed for no reason and upon post-mortem disassembly the faulty mosfet didn't look like a genuine toshiba part like the markings claim (TK12A65D). Said PSU is only outputting like 30-ish watts, so it's not like that mosfet worked hard in its life.
One time, I got a set of mosfets that were actually NPN BJTs that had a fake label! I’m glad I always test before I use cheapo components, otherwise I would have let a lot of magic smoke out. The funny thing is they’re actually incredibly good quality BJTs!
This is SO timely. I just bought a box of Bojack LM358's. You're right....some bargains are indeed bargains while others are complete scams. Box of chocolates. Thank you !
@@hardwarelabor1631 they've been in business for 45 years and are one of the top distributors. I would recommend them equally with Mouser and Digikey 👍
phuu, yeah...I am currently building a table saw with electric lift and tilt...and i spent the best part of today with sorting out problems with the H bridges for the relais.... End of the story... I was working with cheap mosfets from e bay. (2n7000) and all of them had different electrical propertys. Now it works, but it is always disapointing, to realize, that the falt is not on your side.... Bying of e bay is always a bit hit and miss...^^
I am paying 40 dollars for a ARM chip I paid 4 dollars for last year. Not surprisingly fake chips are common and very expensive scams have gone through the roof. I got hit by fake FTDI chips a few years ago. The fake chips would work fine then latchup and go thermonuclear!! Great video as always really enjoyed it. My best regards to you and the family. I also like those components packs. The capacitors packs are shocking quality so beware they explode
I’m a pinball technician and have been struggling with fakes for the last 6-7 years. Typical application is grounding solenoids. They are simply not as robust, for the most part.
I once had to fire up pinball solenoids using irl540n fets, it's a scary inductive load at 50v. I ordered a few times from different sellers and they all blew up instantly, all 50 of them to be precisely. I finally bought from a well known store and they simply work forever.
Most frustrating problem I've had with cheap, probably fake, components from eBay and Aliexpress was when battery charger IC's status pin didn't act as described in the datasheet. Manufacturer had two variants, one with open-drain output and one with push-pull output. Part had markings of one, but was actually the other. Nothing else was off and as far as I can tell, they were probably factory reject with just wrong markings on them.
Mostly ordering from well known suppliers is cheaper than e.g. Ebay, at least for simple standalone components. Issues there are mostly shipping costs and sometimes minimum order quantities.
I like to think of various reasons why the fake ones cost less and why they are more prone to malfunction than an original product. For the cheaper cost characteristic, all they do is replicate the original component which saves them a ton of R&D costs and for higher degree of malfunction could be the reason of bad quality checking methods as they wouldn't know where to put more efforts into the component as they didn't make it and know of it fully in the first place
Wow didn’t realise how big of an issue this is! I think I’ve been stung with fake ATMel memory chips as they keep dying and we know it was a batch from eBay due to sourcing
At the end of the day everything is a matter of luck. My smartphone, chinese model from 2013 has definitely compromised parts inside. For 9 years I am still using the same battery and there are no signs of battery's aging or end of life. We are talking about probably 3500 to 4000 charge-discharge cycles unitl today. Same for the electronics, camera, buttons or display - everything works without any problems, at the same speed as in 2013. Same efficiency of the phone and no sings of overheating, display's reduced brigthness or dead pixels and so on. And I am using this phone quite harsh and without care - my phone saw incredible pollutions, vibrations, mechanical shocks, many many falls, intensive use of the battery... Still the same! My wife changed 3 (three!) Iphones during these 9 years - battery, mechanics or the electronics inside.
You got me curious about the ATMega, how did it underperform? What I can imagine is like higher rated parts (say the automotive/industrial rated ones) not being up to their specs in temperature or such, or worn EEPROMs that die way quicker from being salvaged from used stuff.
@@Kalvinjj Most of them I couldn't bootload, and the ones I did manage to bootload had an unreliable internal oscillator. I didn't test any of the internal resistors or anything; it wasn't worth my time. I needed something fast and cheap, so I risked an Amazon pack.
@@greatscottlab As the big manufacturers seem to move away from DIP, I'm assuming there's a small vacuum that counterfeiters are filling. I mean, they might even be buying the manufacturing equipment from the OEM and just not bothering with QA/QC.
Where I work we've been stung by fakes. One of the most notable being an empty op-amp package. That was a nightmare. But can I just say, at 6:58, the typical value is not a minimum value (the minimum value is blank for that datasheet). The typical value (3mV in this case) is where most devices are expected to be. They can be much better as may have been the case with one of the MOSFETs shown earlier in the video.
I have a very interesting story about it. I built a guitar amplifier, which used a NE555. Nothing worked at all just after the build. I tested everything and nothing. I even put the NE555 in another electronic device and it worked like a charm. But, while swapping the parts, I accidentally put a NE555 from a different “brand” on the faulty amplifier and…. VOILA! Worked like a charm! And both were fake apparently . Hahaha
Great video as always! When I was young there was no alternative than buying components from special electronic shops. Nowadays I buy many cheap parts but since I make low tech projects quality is not usually a problem. I never encountered a part that wasn't working. I'm referring to LM family, BC family and 555 mostly!
Nice video mate I also always use the budget friendly transistor tester But the question that always boggles down my mind is What if ? The transistor tester is fake or not upto the mark ?
That's an incredible inception, and one not to ignore! Probably depends on how the circuit is designed, if it relies on tight tolerances it will likely perform quite badly even if it uses quality components, as there's always a slight variation in their true specs and assembly. Of course there's always that one section that needs good stuff on it or good calibration, so hope for the best that it was well done.
@@Kalvinjj yes i was speaking about tolerances and of course the quality of the components used in the tester itself.lets hope that it's good!! thats the only thing we can do 😄
@@Kalvinjj Test known good items first. Write down that baseline, rather than comparing from the datasheet. If the tester reads 1v low every time, expect the one you're testing to be 1v low too. My cheap tester seems to return results that are accurate to the datasheet, so I trust the results on questionable items.
I have experience with companies going out of their way to prevent you from using counterfeit parts by bricking them via their driver software. Of course im talking about FTDI, who did so in the past with their FT232RL USB-uart Bridge. They took down that driver a while back but I still had to learn the hard way with modules I bought from banggood.
Fake components are okay for hobby use and I have used a lot of them before. But for work a lot of the characteristics that don’t often get used for hobby use matter a lot. For example, we had pulse withstanding resistors burn up before during validation testing because it was not a genuine part. Also had issues with MOSFET’s SOA being met for SMPS designs. Even well known resellers and contract manufacturers have to deal with fake components now. Especially due to all the chip shortages.
As being on the hobby side only, it still suck to get one fake on maximum power consumption, speed reaction or other unavailable capability... (the kind of basic characteristic a noob like my can look). I would prefer it recommend me a lower component specs or a no name brand than lying on spec.
I imagine some stuff like resonant circuits and alikes that rely a lot more on some finer aspects of the parts are the most affected ones, and of course the durability that you can't guarantee at all.
no. When you're a total beginner, they fakes might do, because you're probably not making high-performance stuff or really pay attention to engineering. But as you do more and more engineering, calculating how the thing you are building is supposed to perform, only to then find out after hours or days of debugging and verifying that it doesn't perform simply because there is a part significantly out of spec - that really really sucks. I much prefer having genuine components, so that if the thing i built doesn't work, i know that it's misengineering or some other screwup of mine, not the parts.
The current state of supply and the crisis is forcing everyone to accept these parts as if they were the real deal. For more than one time I had to overlook this on a product prototype so I could show something to the customer. It also affects suppliers and distributors. What crap times to source electronic stuff.
Using just the transistor tester on some mosfets, I've seen wildly different Vt, Rds, etc values on parts (of the same supposed model) bought from different vendors on AliExpress, some way out of spec... and in some cases even wildly different values on parts received in the same order with identical markings. So it seems they're just re-marking random parts. I'm afraid to use them as replacements since the current and voltage ratings could be way off.
The cheap transistor tester only produces a very rough estimate of the values, since it uses non-standard testing procedures (like a lower frequency for capacitors and inductors). I guess the measure accuracy overall is only about ~15%
@@WorkinDuck Understood, but I'm not talking about comparing the values to the specs. I mean that one part will measure for instance and Rds of 2.1 ohms (consistently), and another one from the same lot purchased will measure 5.8 ohms (consistently). So they obviously aren't really the same part.
Me encantó el video! Desde que comencé a aprender electrónica he desarmado muchos aparatos viejos o descompuestos. Después de varios años he descubierto que muchas veces es más conveniente desarmar un aparato de buenas marcas para obtener componentes originales, y que son de mejor calidad que componentes nuevos genéricos, además de que ayudas con al medio ambiente reutilizando.
SSRs are notorious for putting small amperage chips in large claimed packages. Wish there was a "how to spot a fake SSR" video, so we dont have to destroy one to find put.
If you buy a suspected counterfeit component from an actually trusted supplier, ie not ebay, do report it to them. It's useful data that can help them clamp down on it.
I think what's most likely is: 1) legitimate rejects. (TI makes everything, but it fails their quality control) 2) relabeled parts from different manufacturers. 3) empty packages
i have a question though. Why are the rejects packaged? aren't parts supposed to be tested on a wafer, before they are put into the package? (might not work with parts with several dice inside, common in things like high-power ICs, optocouplers, mems...)
@@victortitov1740 very good question. I was speculating, but maybe there's a bonding wire issue, a bad cut, or something not on the wafer? Again, just speculation, but I'm thinking of what would be the easiest route for someone to sell a bootleg or counterfeit product. Edit: doesn't Intel and AMD do that for some of their multicore products? It's a die with 8 cores but only 6 or 7 are good so use firmware to lock off defective ones.
Don't forget the simple acetone Q-Tip rub. The lettering on a fake one will rub off and the Q-Tip will be black. The real one will be silk screened and will not rub off. Not that these days the people producing fakes couldn't silk screen if they had the means to but, it's not likely.
Hi there! Here in my country, mostly we can't choice cheap or expensive....but the IRF 3205...from 6 units...3 died in tests!...neither in "production use"...when I found the expensive ones buyed them... and now I have many working fine for years. No mention the quality of the pins! 😔. Thanks for the video!
The worst fake we got at work was a batch of Optocouplers, IGBT gate drivers . Imagine the bang the drive unit got when we powered it on😃 turns out they were just IC's....
As most of us cannot afford fancy multimeters and oscilloscopes to test everything, the best advice would be to forego ebay for saving pennies on electronic components and buy from reputable distributors :)
When I was in school we had a lab where we were to test the slew rate of an op amp but the test equipment wasn't good enough to measure it as the slew rate was at least an order of magnitude better than the spec. The specs are minimum or maximum values but the parts can be a lot better than the spec for no extra cost.
Perhaps it might be worth adding that the higher the spec of the component you're buying, the more likely it is to be a counterfeit. That's because for something as basic as an LM358, it's near impossible to get a cheaper opamp, so even suspect LM358s are going to perform about as well as a real LM358. On the other hand, it's relatively easy to re-label an LM358 as a higher spec opamp and sell it at a profit. The same reasoning applies to MOSFETs, power transistors, etc. where a cheaper, lower spec device can be passed off as a desirable higher spec one.
Yup, I've seen this exact scenario play out. Got a set of op07 and 358s. The former were fake for sure (did some basic testing) the lm358s seemed within spec
Thank you for your video. Years ago NASA tested chips. Some chips were simply blocks of plastic with leads and no chip inside. I worked on a system where I replaced PCBs - one or more a week. The PCBs needed premo parts and were repaired with seconds. Over 90 % downtime! Lastly, from the late 90s, there was a "capacitor plague." These caps failed if not immediately within a few months. New computers failed shortly after purchase and most within 6 months. Sometimes substandard components work fine. At other times, get the primo parts.
I am addicted to buying electronics. I have bought diy kits but I outgrew the pcbs that tell you where to put everything and the polarity. So I built a power supply. I have searched for other projects and found they almost always just jump to an arduino, rather than just build a circuit. Maybe you could do a short with a few of your favorite electronics books??
![PASULOL รามเกียรติ์ ตอนที่ 4 นนทกพบรัก [Ramakien Ep.4: Nonthok in love]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tMUQgmZzf_A/mqdefault.jpg)
Nothing is worse than having to convince your manager that the reason our products keep blowing up is because he keeps buying fake chips from ebay >:(
There IS something worse!
Being a tech support at a scam company
Your gonna get complains a LOT
Then you need an adequate automated test at the EMS, so that products blowing up is actually their fault :D
Who the f*ck buys from ebay? Never heard of a company thay does that.
Crack the case of the blown out original and compare with a fake. If he doesn't see the difference then he's blind.
There's no company that buys components from eBay, unless you're working for a scamming company (or a t*rror outfit).
I'm an old PCB designer. Nowadays, most features hide behind encrypted software buried inside ASICs and EPROMs, but in the old days (circa 1985), we sometimes installed fake components connected to dead-end circuits to confuse anyone trying to reverse-engineer a critical product feature -- then 'cost-reduced' these parts away in later revisions.
That's fascinating. By any chance have you been following the development of Valve's Steam Deck? I was floored by how much simpler (cleaner) the newest motherboard layout is compared to the original, and I have a feeling my wonderment is only a fraction of what a pro PCB designer would be feeling.
that really isn't the same as this, i mean nowadays i doubt fake circuit paths even exist and so the fake components in the video on top of not being the same type of fake would also be exposed to the live circuit and ready to potentially fail causing real problems and not a simple headache
Haha, that is an interesting idea. Fortunately (or unfortunately?) we never did that. Nowadays the designs evolve so fast that you don't have time to copy them, nor money to waste in reverse-engineering teams (unless you really want some rocket science stuff). True story, we had many products with bugs that were blind-copied by competitors - they copied the bugs too! - and until they went to the market with their products, we had already a new version which was much improved, had more features, fixed the bugs, and it was cheaper. Even simple things, we made an industrial CPU module years ago, this type you insert into the main board in a socket similar to laptop RAM modules (align it to a "key", push it in and tilt it down towards the PCB), everything was working nice, but it had a "mechanical" bug, the slot for the key was a bit too large and if you would not align it properly in the socket then you could create a short circuit between some pins. Few months later some Chinese company made the same "mistake", they copied our modules mot-a-mot, and we heard of some of them letting the magic smoke out due to short circuits - they copied even the larger key slot and with their tolerances the issue was worse. Meantime we had a new module which was faster, had more memory, fixed the mechanical bug, and sold for only few bucks more.
Hi I'm a service technician
I work with stuff from 80-98
Companies die by your hand 😂
I've myself discovered dead end circuits
Damn, to this day I'm still trying to reverse engineer one of your 1980's creations. Ha-Ha (jk)
And what if the "transistor or chip tester" is fake too?! Wowwza
Some "fakes" could also be factory rejects, parts which didn't meed the specifications in in-house tests, which get recirculated into shady markets.
Agree, thats what happened to Sandisk.
I can confirm this 100%. I was purchasing large amounts of common ic's gom a shady Shenzhen vendor and spoke to them about this. 90% of their stock were "b grade" equipment that didn't pass quality control that they purchased directly from the manufacturer to "recycle". Their idea of recycling was to sell at a very large discount. Some parts seemed to work just fine and be in spec. Very few were actually non functional. For fun projects they were a very cheap supply that worked just fine most of the time especially if you over spec your components.
It's not just shady markets, they find their way into the big name component distributors as well, because those places are just sales offices full of idiots who will do ANYTHING to get that promotion.
It surprises me they don't just take the ones that don't pass and label them as a different model, like Intel does with their CPUs. Intel test them all at slower and slower speeds until they hit one that is stable, and that's the speed that gets stamped on it and sold as. I would've assumed the same could be done with most components - figure out what signals, voltages and currents it can handle, find the next lowest model that meets those specs, and hey presto a reliable component - just maybe not the one you intended to make.
@@Berkeloid0 Well, CPUs cost 100s of USDs, so wasting each CPU that doesn't work costs a pretty penny. Whereas, electrical components take cents to manufacture per piece(most not all), and the amount is so great, that they can't perform such an intensive procedure on each component, so they just `Recycle` it.
If you think this is a problem for hobbyists, it's a terror for those of us dealing with hi-reliability space, aircraft, and military electronics.
I can't imagine. Rigorous testing I hope.
.. I remember that even the NASA had issues a few years ago with fake chips from China
I worked in an office that shared space with an electronics manufacturer with military contracts. The lunchroom TVs would play "How to Spot A Fake Component" on loop for hours. Can you imagine the repercussions if something like a sonar buoy or radar system started glitching and giving false positives? Or if the GPS system started lying to you? It's literally the beginning of several Bond movies.
The real problem is that all this components should be patent free, so "anyone" could build it and improve the quality and many other stuff ...
Batch approval testing is the only way. See the video from RCA "The reasosn Why". They run tests on EVERY BATCH received prior sending them to the production line.
We used to buy Motorola transistors to the OFFICIAL representative here and one time all the tested modules failed one after the other the production tests. The opened the TO-3 thing .... surprise ....... it was the die of a T220 if not smaller. We called them and treatened to contact Motorola offices directly to inform that. The change the lot inmediatly no questions. OFFICIAL MOTOROLA RESELLER !!!!! Issue with our crap was, it pushed the hell out of the transistor ..... fakes will blow inmediately.
When I was a teenager in the early 1970's, I spent several glorious years working for a local electronic component shops building all sorts of Diode testers, transistor testers, MOSFET testers, 74 series logic testers, 555 timer testers, even vacuum tube testers...... I had a great time.
I've been stung with fakes, both with mosfets and PIC micros. The mosfets ran hotter than they should, so resistance was higher. I also had issues loading data to the PICs. However some fakes worked just fine. As you say, it's the luck of the draw.
How can pic be faked? it isn't open source
@@hamzakhanrajput7881 Every component is just a black box. If you know what pin does what, you can easily fake it. It may not have same specs as original component, but it will be similar enough.
A pic cannot be easily faked it is not "just a component" it is an MCU. But I have had STM32s being delivered as empty shells. No silicon inside, just the plastic housing with pins. They even did the effort of putting real ones in the top tray, so we could test it.
@@hamzakhanrajput7881 It may not be fake. It could be a defective part that failed some of the production tests. You just never know for sure if acquired from untrusted sources.
@@hamzakhanrajput7881 ase explained in the video, by using rejects, or relabeling cheaper pic of the same family. It's not a reverse-engineering, it's a scam, so they don't need to work or be exact copies
On that last test, it is important to point out that you may not want a super fast ramping speed as it can cause more noise in your circuit. Slower slew rates affect the power supply rails less as well.
Good point
I love how you recommend to get a cheap transistor tester made from the cheap fake parts you want to test, to test the parts :)
Buahahahaahahah.
What if the tester is built in such a way that the fake components are not detected?
The tester is good for quickly weeding out DOA parts or parts that are grossly mis labeled - caught one seller (out of dozens) who sent me transistors reprinted as mosfets. A picture of the part in the tester was all I need to win a "item not as described" claim.
You can build one yourself with highest quality components you want. But the cheap prebuild testers are very good too.
i love how you just assume you know what he has
In my experience, especially with boxed assortments, the components are scavenged, or bought in waste lots from manufacturers. You are almost as likely to end up with higher spec, higher performing components as you are bad ones. As you noticed with the opamp.
"Cheaply sourced' can mean a lot of things. Awlays profile the important components.
Thats interesting because I've bought diy kits from AliExpress, Ebay, and Bangood.
So far a few kits have had DOA LEDs.
Missing components.
ICs that could be faulty.
I bought two AC adaptors one of which had fluctuating voltage.
Opened it up and the internal mainboard didn't appear to be new. I checked a half dozen SMD resistors all gave faulty readings. I looked at the mainboard and components. It appears to be dust or sediment on one side.
Were these ac adaptors flood damaged? I would almost wager thats what happened.
It appears that way. On left side all the caps are brand new. On the other side the electrolytic caps look old!
Aside from that everything else has worked still who really knows. Issues my pop up in the future.
I'm not the worried about it. It's just a hobby for me and if it's cheap it's good. I bought 5 ICs for $2.50 AU not even expecting them to arrive but they actually did arrive. What can you buy for $2.50? I can't even buy a coffee for that price.
@@decem_unosquattro9538 Try searching for products that don't claim to be made in US. For example you don't want a TI mosfet for cheap, but you can expect something similar from a Chinese brand for one tenth the price, and it will meet its datasheet perfectly. (Just looked up about it, we still have to catch up on high-performance mosfets, but for small ones you can safely buy cheap ones that come in bags of 50)
@@yuxuanhuang3523 I'm not so concerned about whether components meet exact values of course it would be nice if they did. I do electronics as a hobby. If the price is extremely cheap then that's good. I guess in time I'll buy better quality because it lasts longer and is more reliable.
Not much point buying cheap but it fails quickly.
If too many components fail I'll buy from reputable outlets.
You Chinese need to improve quality.
Batteries are particularly bad in this regard.
Samsung batteries are supremely good whereas Chinese batteries from my own experience just aren't that good.
Yup. I've even come across fakes in surplus Radioshack assortments. And the 2N3055s I got from my assortment from Elenco had white epoxy over the die, which when removed revealed a much smaller die than I've seen in other pictures. So in that case, it could be they just toss whatever transistor die they have lying around that's close enough, it seems. Because I don't see any other reason the would manufacture 3055s with a smaller die for any reason. Seems like a lot of work to make a penny. But I guess they can still automate the process of putting the fake die in the to-3 package. So it might not be as much work as I think.
Its a huge problem att work. We have had faked IGBTer and high performance DIODs.
And yea thats a huge issue, they burned up in testing.Its a huge problem att work. We have had faked IGBTer and high performance DIODs.
And yea thats a huge issue, they burned up in testing.
Thanks for this. As a beginner I've used components which have confused me by not working as expected and because I'm a beginner my natural conclusion is that I've done something wrong. Which is really demoralising if you think you've done the correct thing.
Knowing that fake/dodgy components is a real issue, this actually gives me some hope to try a couple of failed applications again(with better components!)
Happened to me. I reconsidered my understanding more than once because a part didn't behaved like it should
Also double check data sheets. Some manufacturers like to reverse pins for some reason. I had the hardest time getting a transistor to work until I flipped it around, which was the opposite of what every data sheet showed.
As a hobbyist, it’s actually sometimes cheaper to use fake components for testing (eg arduinos) as I know I’m gonna blow a couple anyways, then use original on the final part.
No it's not. Testing with fake components is real stupid because when there is an issue, you don't know if it due to mistake in design, assembly or because of components. If you need cheap components just buy cheap Chinese components that do not pretend to be something else from LCSC. The problem with fake components is that for the same price or even lower price you can buy genuine Chinese components that perform up to spec and have a datasheet. Why would you buy only hell knows what disguised as Texas instruments LM358 when you can buy real LM358 from Chinese manufacturer for $ 0.03?
@@woopsserg Other components you may be right about, but from my experience with microcontrollers and similar modules, as long as it works, its good enough for prototyping (university robotics projects etc) and only once we have the final design down we stick an original Arduino on it, as it is very easy to burn/kill the Arduino if wired or configured incorrectly during the testing process. To put in context, cheap Arduino clones cost 2-3 USD, while the original goes from 15-20 USD. and we blow through 3-4 easily during testing. that's 12 USD for Chinese and 40 USD for original. What would you rather spend if you knew you were gonna burn a couple components anyways?
@@neelkanthgovindji1173 Arduino clone or other cloned device being cheap does not necessarily mean it's built from fake components, and I wrote about components only. "As long as it works" until it does not. Again, what I said why in hell would you buy fake cat in the sack garbage rather than just cheap genuine components? Also fake opamp, MOSFET or 7805 vreg working in one circuit does not mean it will do the same in another.
@@neelkanthgovindji1173 Also people buy Chinese buck converter modules based on fake LM2596 that is not even close to original (5 times lower switching frequency). All while they can get cheaper modules based on genuine MPxxxx ICs (MP1584 for example) that are smaller, heat less and output more current with less ripple. Fake does not mean cheap, it means you are probably overpaying for what it actually is even when it's dirt cheap.
@@woopsserg They are made from fake / clone components such as the USB to serial chip on the Arduino's, the voltage regulators (AMS1117) are regularly failing if you supply anything apart from 5v (while the spec sheet says it can handle up to 12-20v), and many other things we have observed. Hell sometimes even the ATMEGA chip is not what it says, you will get ATMega168 and not 328, and even then its a process to get it to work because the memory is less and the bootloader is different. As for buying alternative cheaper components, maybe I can do that for my projects but at the end of the day its not easy for everyone to research say an alternative mosfet to what they are using that they can find a reliable supplier for and be able to modify the use case to accommodate for the differences in the alternative component, it may be easy, it may be not. For a professional use case, it is easy to say just use xxx and yyy instead of zzz. But for small time engineers and hobbyists, we have to make do with that we find. So in that case it is easier and cheaper to prototype and test with fakes even if I might face some issues or have to change out failed components. And as soon as the project is finalized, you can use the usual off the shelf original components.
the problem is consistency. you can buy great "fake" components the 1st time and crap the 2nd time, even from the same seller. you never know what you're going to get until you get it. even in the same stock, there can be great and bad fake components, and you should test them all. it can be fine for a hobbyist, but as long as they don't complain on social media afterward if they've gotten a rip-off (that's part of the risk)
You have hit the nail on the head with this comment. It's difficult to know and, most of the time, the suppliers are also the victims as they aren't aware that they were supplied with fakes either. I have had a situation where a component was obviously a fake (Literally identified itself as a fake) so I contacted the supplier directly rather than leaving bad feedback since I had been buying good quality gear from them for several years. They were a little defensive at first and asked for evidence ( I'm sure people often blow things up then scream fake ). I sent them the evidence that I had and they accepted it very apologetically and offered a refund. I did not bother as it was not worth a lot of money and it was just for their benefit that I had contacted them. I have since purchased a lot more gear from this supplier and they are still my most trusted supplier. A complaint on social media would not have been of any benefit to either of us. I would always recommend the first course of action is to contact the supplier prior to providing any negative feedback.
Let you guys know one of my personal experiences - some cheap DC-DC modules can still "work properly" at 200 Celsius/degrees when the output current reachs 3A. They won't automatically shutdown as they just don't have a thermal-resistor. One of them melted through my 3D printed case, and reached my carpet. Lucky my home switchboard stopped the further damage.....
The other source of counterfeit components is from extra shifts at the foundry in China. The same labor gets used, but the original company makes no profit because they’re sold onto the black market. QA gets skipped as well since that would reduce the profit of the pirates, accounting for more variability in quality.
It often happens after the contract has been fulfilled. When a company outsources manufacturing to somewhere like Guangdong they often find the costs will start to creep up after the first couple of production runs, so they shop around and then part ways when they find somewhere cheaper. Often the factories will initially absorb the cost of the tooling and die manufacture to win the contract, so they actually own the equipment to make the parts but they just don't own the right to make the actual product. IP isn't really something Chinese manufacturers worry about so once the customer cuts ties with them they keep on operating. The plant is already set up for it and there will always be left over raw materials after a run, so there is very little upfront cost involved. If they do need to purchase raw materials, there will always be cheaper lower quality options available. Add that to the lack of QA and you now have the typical counterfeit product. Sometimes they may assemble and package offsite to keep it low key. The only way to prevent it is to purchase the product dies or ensure the tooling and dies are destroyed after manufacturing ceases (never 100% guarantee) or to build and run the factory yourself. (many difficult barriers to overcome).
@@Mad4400 interesting info, thank you
Yeah, we made a rope to hang ourselves onto by moving most of manufacturing to China 3 decades ago. Once Nortel was out, our college electronic courses also disappeared and the quality of computer technology courses also suffered.
All by design. Feature, not flaw.
Which is something the "OEM" companies know is going to happen .... they just don't care because they love getting the cheap manufacturing from these foundry "partners".
Its a huge problem att work. We have had faked IGBTer and high performance DIODs.
And yea thats a huge issue, they burned up in testing.
Oh boy. I think especially with high power stuff it can be really problematic.
@@greatscottlab yes it can be a huge problem in high power circuitry because most of the faked component's maximum ratings differ from datasheet but most of the time they have same response.
how did you purchase them?
@@greatscottlab What if my testequipement is also fake?
Can you tell what diodes and transistors were?
The worst scenario is when you buy a "genuine" device like a Samsung charger, it fails after 1 year, you disassemble it and you find out that wasn't a genuine product. It happened to me, the layout of the PCB was like the "genuine" one, but some components like the power mosfet from the mains side was only a piece of plastic with no connection from its pads.
The driver ic was different (power mosfet included in the same die)... rectifying diode too... a cheap charger, made exactly like the genuine product. I've paid the price of a genuine one. My mistake was that i haven't kept the receipt. Even the engraved numbers on the plastic case are the same...
There are more fake ones here than the original one and the challenge of knowing who's fake and genuine is hard.
@@taktuscat4250 also I think some buy online like amz and send back fakes instead of original thing
Yeah I think this happens when a big company (like samsung) moves it's manufacturing elsewhere - but all the factory equipment stays there. So it is trivial for someone to scoop up the factory, keep half the workers, cut as many expensive parts out as possible and then churn out cheap near identical knockoffs for a quick buck.
I've bought "genuine" replacement Samsung earbuds (the sort that used to come free with phones) and found that they don't even get the pinout right. One ear had reversed polarity, in all of them
What is your recourse after a year or more?
Some of these fakes might not be fakes at all, the font and print differences are the least important part of the manufacturing especially if the original manufacturer licenses the production of a component or if they subcontract the production
Also different factories can use package from different source. There are also changes to the package in time due to different suppliers, new ROHS materials etc. Just as datasheets get new revisions, the mosfets do as well. Factory rejects are a huge factor too.
It's not the writing on the chip, it's the screwed up function of the chip!
@@peatmoss4415 Yes, but what he wanted to tell is that you shouldn't solely rely on the casing.
You have to test them to find out, if they're fake.
Maybe they changed the placement of the text, the way the text is engraved onto the chip, used different molds for the casing, ...
It's at least pretty difficult if you have to find fake chips in a convolut of genuine chips with totally different manufacturing dates, if you would try to find them without testing
While marking difference is the real thing as genuine part can be manufactured by multiple factories and over long time period with process changes, it's wishful thinking than those cheap ebay parts from China may be genuine. Your best bet for them is to be recycled e-waste.
@@woopsserg This is absolute nonsense. If parts are cheap they must be fake? The parts cost the same as genuine parts in wholesale/bulk quantity. They are located close to the manufacturing factories. There's nothing inherently unbelievable about cheap parts. Maybe you should learn Chinese so you have some idea of what you're painting with a single brush.
The component industry relies on contract fab houses to make a lot of their parts. It is possible that your name brand part and clone part are made in the same place with the same materials and equipment. It could also be the design specs and details for the real part were transferred after dark to different fab for cloning. I buy parts on ebay only as a last resort and have had no trouble. Much to my surprise.
I'm guessing that the most common source of fakes are factory rejected originals that were supposed to be scrapped because they didn't meet the test specifications. Instead of being scrapped, they are collected and labeled off site and resold. Once that sales path is established, you can imagine the factory workers that are coordinating this scam might tweak the yield numbers for each batch a bit and "reject" perfectly good devices too, just to have more free throw-away parts to collect and resell, resulting in parts that ARE original and in-spec sold for cheap.
The last time I bought components from an unreliable source was when I got 2 "LM338" regulators that were just two series resistors in a TO-220 package
Oh no. What a sicken'er.
They probably scavenged a bunch of caddock resistors and refurbished them.
lol, now that’s a serious scam right there.
Yes i bought a bag of those LM338 s as well - also 50Amp bridge rectifiers in aluminium casing with only 4X 4007 diodes potted inside
In my experience I have found that TO-3 wipe the case with acetone - fake parts the printing will wipe right off.
There can be many ways to "fake" silicon, and it is very hard for a hobbyist to test for every scenario. So now 95% of my parts come from authorized distributors and even sometimes directly thru the manufacturer, even for critical res and caps.
The fakes I can think of:
- sanded and re-marked packages
- factory rejects
- cloned designs
- 3rd shifts / ghost shifts, where it would've been a genuine part if the fab put the parts under normal QC.
The difference between the markings and leadframe are not necessarily showing fake / counterfeit. Former International Rectifier (now Infineon) builds parts in several factories. Each may have slightly different cosmetic but the spec and reliability are equivalent
Labeling often depends on the used packaging facility, however the die inside is the same.
Well, many (the most??) of the fake electronic components don't come from the sources you mention, but are factory rejects, or "low binning". Mosfets, transistors, etc., but especially capacitors and LEDs. I used to work in a factory in China for few years, at the end of the last century, and it was like that, the customer placed order for 10k of device X, he was quoted 10 times the price (but he knew, and it was still cheaper to him than producing the device locally), so we produced 100k, then he came with his engineers and testers and tested all 100k, chose the best 10k, the rest were earmarked for burning. But the Chinese people are good entrepreneurs... For the last 20+ years I am working in electronic manufacturing business in south-east Asia too, but outside of China, and when it comes to buying components, especially capacitors or LEDs, we have to make a very tough IQC. Such components always come from binning (edit: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning#Semiconductor_manufacturing), because the factory can not control the production process, they just make millions and sort them. Ceramic caps come out of PD line anything like plus or minus 50% of capacitance, and are sorted in bins, respective the LEDs are sorted (sometimes in a hundred different bins) by frequency (color, especially for yellow/orange, 590nm, where few nm are important, it will be reddish or greenish if the tolerances slip), forward voltage, brightness - five levels of each, and you have already 125 bins - you can buy them very cheap if you can live with all bins, but if you only want between 589 and 591 nm, with forward voltage between 1.8 and 2.0V, and specific millicandela brightness (otherwise your matrix display will look like sh!t), then you either buy all and sort them by yourself, and scrap (or resell cheap) the failed ones, or you buy only one bin, you pay 125 times the price, because the vendor will claim he can not sell the rest, and then guess what he will do with the rest? Scrap them? neeee...
If the price for resources would be as high as their actual (ecological) price, then it would be cheaper to optimize the processes rather than producing n-times as much. However in our capitalistic world, the true price does not matter, so the second way is the way many will take...
Why did you write so long comment, that must've taken years to write
@@Otto_Heiskanen I am a VERY fast typist, it takes longer to proof read it than to type it, because I always make some mistakes that need fixing (not a native speaker), of which few still escape every time - the mistakes are cleverer than us.
@@laurv8370 just type everything and let the readers bin them. The readers will get to choose what they need to know and discard the rest 😂
Interesting information 👍
It seems like cheap components are actually the same device but probably the methods of manufacture are very much cheapened which introduces less consistency amongst the final products. Fair enough in my eyes.
It would be interesting to test multiple "original" ones to see if they give variability.
Without the marketing and development costs
Often your cheap or fake are remarked or overstock items. The overstock can be anything, and the remark definitely anything, so even if you buy a pack of 10 you might find all 10 are totally different, only thing in common is the package looked the same, so they were all blacktopped and remarked. Some things are simply just old equipment being run to the last, things like resistors are ok provided you are not too critical of things like tolerance and stability, but for parts like capacitors best to stick to genuine parts, as the fakes are literally anything in the same size can, and the polarity is often suspect on them as well. Cheap parts be prepared to test each one before use to see if it is somewhere within the tolerance of the genuine one first.
most of the fake active devices were simply re-marked instead of a cheap clones. there's also refurbished device which came from recycles where the leads were simply re-tinned or cut and weld a new leads
It's common practice in many cases to put components through QA, and the ones that don't quite make the cut get down-badged. For instance, I heard an anecdote where one factory making transistor radios would sell the exact same radio to three different vendors, with the only difference being the allowable tolerances on the finished product. The cream of the crop went to a name brand vendor, and the bottom dregs went to an el-cheapo fly by night operation.
Even finished devices like solid-state-relays can be remarked or relabeled. I have a few SSRs marked as 50 amp that are actually 15 amp devices with a new label put on.
Thank you for spending the time to share about such,
for the hobbyist certain components don't really matter as long as we can make our prototype projects before splashing out on better and certified components , so for the fake stuff well it has its purpose (cheap, small purchases, don't have to be a company)
But on a commercial side , well only a fool would buy from a uncontrolled source like Ebay and amazon and so.
And to say this is why companies that certify their parts/products charge more. you get better quality and safety.
Anyway im glad that there is a cheaper option, but i do tend to buy mainly from a proper component company.
Very timely and important video! Thanks for this reminder. This is _really serious_ stuff, where failure and fault tolerance is critical and in some applications, lives may be genuinely at risk!
Well said!
@@greatscottlab The video title seems very misleading... "Your components are probably fake"; so you received mainly fakes from digikey? I doubt it...
As a beginner in the hobby, I also found this out the hard way. I bought all my components through ali because the shipping costs are much lower. not knowing that even 10-cent components are counterfeited. I now only buy them through the more famous dealers because otherwise I really have no confidence in them. Only buy a lot less now because of the high shipping costs.
I just underrate my components by 50% and have never run into a problem. Real or fake, running components anywhere near their rating always produces a product called "cheap consumer grade garbage".
If I only have to derate by 50%, but the component is 80% cheaper, I win.
I have a couple of eBay sellers who I trust, but I only buy components like resistors, leds and diodes from them, stuff that would otherwise have high minimums and high shipping and still be "generic" if I bought from an electronics distributor
Thats a problem I have too. Legit sources are setup to cater to large corporations with huge orders to fill huge production runs. So shipping costs on smaller orders is exhorbitant to the extreme. Hence I and so many others are driven to cheaper suppliers & end up getting burned with fakes.
A video on cheap or DIY chip testers would be really nice as a follow up video! (To help identify fake or bad IC chips)
up
it’s very difficult to validate a component by testing it. The spec sheets usually specify average and worst case values. But in any given lot of semiconductors there’s quite a lot of variability, and it’s only the ones that don’t meet their spec that get tossed. Ones that beat their spec are considered OK unless the spec has a guaranteed minimum and maximum, which many don’t. It’s far better to just buy your components from a reliable source like Mauser/Digikey in the US, Avnet/Arrow/Rutronik in the EU, or their counterparts in other countries. If you are just buying parts for hobby use it’s fine to buy parts from eBay, but I never put them in anything I care about.
Yep. Basically this approach. Not to say that they haven't been conned a few times either I'm sure; also I've seen/bought plenty from Mouser that was uh...definitely not worth what they charged and looked little better than what I could buy on ebay. Probably knobs and connectors come to mind; those places ought to be ashamed of themselves. 7.50 for a plastic knob, Mouser? HOWEVER lol...things like capacitors, high wattage resistors, ALL actives (with exception to maybe lamps or leds), just go the safe route and buy from places that...they may gouge on some stuff (or pack things idiotically like Newark does lol), but hey at least you KNOW you're safe from this issue.
But 'fakes' or B grade even find them selves onto the shelf of a legit distributor, it happens.
I have come across fake IGBT modules working on AC variable frequency drives. They labels claim they block 1200V, but I've found many that fail and break over at around 800V. They use PWM on a DC bus typically charged to around 650V to control 3 phase induction motors. The amount of energy these modules control is massive, and when they exceed their blocking voltage, they fail shorted, dumping all of the stored energy in the capacitors in a very spectacular plasma ball. Normally this only happens when customers try to repair their own stuff. Actual modules are very expensive (especially when you need minimum 6 of them), so they often opt for the cheap alternatives, not knowing these alternatives may be fake, remanufactured, or even defective out of the box.
Fake electronic parts are not just a problem if you buy cheap stuff on Ebay. I'm currently employed by a rather big heatpump and water heater manufacturer in germany. The semiconductor shortages are really hitting us hard and we had to convert to other chips and diverge from our regular ways of sourcing components to be able to keep up the production. So some parts are sourced from brokers we never worked with before and it had happened that we got counterfit microcontrollers. It's unknown where those fu**ers "infested" the supply chain. Luckily our QC for incoming goods checks every incoming batch of material and discovered the fake chips. For first deliverys from a new supplyer and every so often they even go as far as making die shots. I allways tought that was overkill, but now I know it better...
Thanks for the feedback. Interesting story.
Good job! I hope you made a video about it!
@@mrtechie6810 Why should I? I'm not part of QC and details would be internal company information. There is nothing more to tell.
Acetone (nail polish remover) is a great way to test if the component is relabeled. Apply to a cotton swab and try to remove the markings in the component. If the component is re-painted, the acetone will dissolve the paint and reveal the original markings.
I'm not sure if this is a common problem with components that are still in production, but it very much is a problem for older ICs like 6502 processors and EPROMs.
I have ended up with eproms that were fake and did not have as much capacity as they should have had. I can't remember what they were supposed to be or what they were cause it was a few years back, but I remember being very confused as to what was happening.
Ethyl acetate also works, if you happen to have that around instead of acetone.
I've had good and bad questionably sourced components in the past too. A lot of them might not totally meet spec, but they're good enough. If I can get "good enough" for 1/10 the price of the original, that's not a bad thing.
I do prefer that the "good enough" folks just sell them under their own names. They're doing the counterfeit markings, so they can get the sales. People will (almost) always prefer the name brand over some random source. But if that random source is like you saw, being better or more cost effective than the brand name, I want to buy theirs again in the future.
That's how respected brand names become respected. They'll never really succeed if no one ever knows who they are. And if they're selling under a respected brand name, so are a bunch of other companies. They make more sales, but not as many as they could.
I don't know what the fix for them would be, to get them from "better quality startup" to "industry leader". That's hard to do, and it takes a ton of marketing money to even get close to great sales.
In my experience there are many "good enough" parts already sold under their own brands and part numbers. I see this regularly when trying to look up part numbers from inexpensive boards, and the datasheet is difficult or impossible to find online with maybe only one web hit from a Chinese website that mentions the particular part number as the correct type of component at all. For the many inexpensive electronic products sold on eBay and Ali Express, there is a whole sub-industry of cheaper ICs being produced to go into them. In those cases you won't see counterfeit parts made to look like top name brands (Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, etc.) but harder to find part numbers from lower cost countries.
LCSC can be a good source for a lot of the Chinese-brand parts that you see in cheap electronics (and that are hard to find for sale outside of China), as well as the sort of "good enough and a fraction of the price" components discussed in this thread.
They also stock a lot of "western" brands, but I've found a lot of those to be more expensive at LCSC than at Digi-key/Arrow/Mouser/etc 🤷♀️
I haven't done enough with parts ordered from them to give a _meaningful_ review in terms of quality of parts, but I've never had an issue with them.
My biggest complaint is that their website's product filtering functionality left a lot to be desired, making it really tedious to discover components that meet your requirements. It always felt like there were some great products hiding somewhere in a 200-page list, but I couldn't effectively use filters to find them (like I could with, e.g., Digi-key) without checking the specs of thousands of parts one-by-one...
However, it's been about 4 years since I've ordered from LCSC - or any other electronics distributor - so hopefully they've improved their website in the meantime!
I would happily buy clones sold as clones with listed, lower specs than I would pay 10X for genuine TI or whatever components. 99% of the time I just need something that works, and if a chinese company can field some home grown products that are close to the specs, I'd rather buy that than buy "refurbished" (read: pulled from a dead board, sanded down and reengraved) genuine chips
A few months back I wanted to get into breadboard guitar pedals, and I ordered everything on aliexpress. I can't count the amount of times where I felt like an idiot because even the simpliest circuits wouldn't work, only to find out that the problem was the garbage quality of the components.
I found that resistor and capacitors usually work as intended, but transisors and opamps would either not work at all or work for a couple of minutes
My experiences are the same as yours. I would build the same build only to find out they weren't working. I thought I was horrible at soldering or doing something wrong. Come to find out, it was the IC's that weren't working. I totally can relate.
@@yummyklown9226 It is always good to choose not the cheapest one on the AliExpress, they also get quicker to you. The other tell when you already get them is that the good ones are in factory packing cut-off piece of roll, while the maybe fake ones you get in bulk in a zip bag. Another option is to choose a reputable CN IC producer instead of a probable copy of a US product. The problem there is that not many Chinese IC producers have datasheets in English.
My only mishap and it was a module, not a component, that LM2596 blew up, really broken into a few pieces, while working, after about a seven months. That one is one of about 200 step-up/down modules I have used, the other which is more technology-oriented is that OLED display modules lose brightness much quicker than western components, but also cost 10x less.
Another issue with fake parts is the reliability. Had multiple counterfeit voltage regulators randomly go bad within a few months and pass the input voltage directly to the output, despite them never running too hot, out of spec, etc. Replaced with a genuine one without any other changes and it was fine for years.
I buy a lot of components from eBay suppliers, but I only would use them for my experiments, where they are not critical. I suspect many of the "working" components are actually similar but cheaper components that have smaller maximum voltage or current ratings etc so if you are not pushing their limits you may never notice. But if I was making a circuit to actually use in an application where failure would be inconvenient or dangerous, I would always source them from a reputable supplier. Cheap components are great for trying out ideas though.
One thing to watch however is buying rare or "popular" components -- replacement chips for retro computers are a minefield at the moment. Its too easy to take any 40 pin DIP chip, relable it as a 6510 or a VIC chip and sell it for 10 times the cost of the original part - which might even be a faulty or empty chip. By the time the buyer finds out, the seller has disappeared with the money.
Hii
8 ago when I started electronics I was building simple circuits such as making an adjustable power supply using an adjustable linear regulator, the LM317.
I bought them from ebay for around $2 10pcs and oh my, it was a mistake.
The problem I had was the potentiometer to adjust the output voltage blowing up which occured when having a load at the output, I thought I did a mistake back then, I took hours of searching the issue, I even went on a forum to discuss about my problem.
Then days later I thought it was a bad batch so I decided to buy some more from another place, once I received them they worked as expected without the pot blowing.
This is when I concluded I bought fake regulators at the first place.
I was curious what the die looked like so I smashed one of them and managed to get a glimpse of it, I've then compared with online pictures and I was surprised to find out that the die was at least 4 times smaller than genuine regulators...
There is a video on TH-cam named "LM317T - Fake and real" which exactly shows what I had.
I was faced with exactly the same issue a few years ago: very simple VARIABLE power supply using LM317-T0220 "branded ST" burned the potentiometers (5 trials !) and eventually ended themselves as dead short, with load current much lower than 1A. But they were OK when used at fixed voltage (ie with a resistor divider), i didn't understand why ...
The price is kind of suspicious - 10 for $2. It's very popular IC and it will be a target.
@@pliedtka Indeed, I was young back then and l used to order from china only because of cheap price
Sometimes the ones you get cheap from Chinese sellers are actually from the original manufacturer, but fall out of spec; so they're "real", just the rejects, which may have been sold to a 3rd party under the table, just to recoup some losses on them. But I think it only really matters if you have real or fake [the ones that are actually the same type of component and work similarly, if not in spec] if you're doing something mission critical... or high power applications, where there is more of a chance of fire
@@user-qr6gf2tm6x probably! It makes sense both from an ecological and business perspective to sell as much of what you produce as you can, and minimize what goes into a landfill.
In his video the "original" and the "fake" do the same thing, and have the same properties when measured. So... how are they fake exactly? They're just simple components, like getting screws or nails. I'd always go for the cheaper ones, no reason to pay extra for something like this. Sure, some might fail or be a tiny bit out of spec, who cares, they're cheap - and this can also happen with the expensive ones. The more expensive price tag is an illusion that makes you think they're better quality, or they're built with different procedures - they're not. As for Chinese sellers, yeah, why not get them from them? They're all built there anyway, including your "real" expensive ones, so I don't see the problem. And since they're all built there, I'd argue the "original" components are the ones you get straight from China. They're cheap, as they should, without the Bezos tax and you're helping the actual workers instead of making Bezos's mega-yacht bigger.
@@StupidusMaximusTheFirst for most applications it probably makes no difference. Like, if you buy 5% class resistors and the ones you get actually can be up to like 5.5% +/-, it probably won’t make a difference. Or if a 5V regulator puts out 5.08V instead of 4.99-5.01 or whatever the spec is. Maybe some extra rejects, but for hobbyists, and buying in bulk… definitely not a big deal
they literally meet the specifications though. Only the one mosfet with a super high resistance broke spec.
The thing with those testers are so cheap that, they will probably be using cheap fake components themselves, so I wonder how reliable the results will be?
Ha! I was going to post exactly this.
Turtles all the way down
I use one for checking resistors, when building a circuit.
They're really neat for what they are, but not very accurate. Especially poor at testing power devices because they can't source much current/voltage to the DUT. But still quite useful for a quick and dirty test.
Thanks for making this video, for me it did exactly what you intended: Raising awareness. I was under the impression that these electrical components are not really messed around with, because they have to follow guidelines, etc. I thought there are just different companies making the same components with small differences, but i didn't think there were actual fakes that don't even try to deliver what was needed.
But I guess you only need to avoid really sketchy looking stuff, like random stuff on ebay, with unknown seller, bad description and extremely cheap ones.
Because it seems like the bigger sellers, like this Bojack stuff you got there, is "close enough". They sell on amazon too (on ebay they don't have any product ratings for some reason) but if they were garbage that doesn't deliver or even burns, I'm sure they would have a ton of 1 star ratings, of people calling out the bad products.
When I was starting out with electronics, I had no idea where you’re supposed to buy parts, so this kind of video is very helpful
For me it was RadioShack. Once I entered electronics class we had 2 main reference books from suppliers; if only I could remember their names lol.
@@John-oo9bu One of them is likely to be whatever Element 14 Group calls themselves in your country. It could be something like CPC Farnell (UK) or Newark Electronics (USA/Canada).
@@katbryce Newark sounds familiar. I just remember that anytime we needed to look something up, we would be told to go get one of the two books.. Thank you.
What a great time to be alive. Given all the less expensive testers, components, etc. that were very expensive, if not unaffordable except to big businesses years ago, we can truly enjoy electronics as a hobby. I really like this video. It gives solid insight as to quality of "fake" components. I was taught in college years ago to always-always test your components. The few minutes it takes to check them (fake or not) will save hours of headache later when someone has to test them in circuit and spend time soldering to replace defective ones. Even a new resistor could be bad and hard to pin down once in a circuit. Thank you for the video.
I bought some NE5532 from our chinese friends. Turns out that they were all fake. I guess these are relabeled LM358. They are working fine as an opamp but have a really bad crossover distortion. Same happened for a bunch of TL072. You can easily check if the NE5532 are original, cause they have two protection diodes between the positive and negative input. But for the TL072 you are lost 🙂 Those OPs are working, but you should not use them in an audio setup. You will receive bad crossover distortions. But for, lets say, a rectifier or something else, they could be perfectly used. So i recommend to buy parts at a reasonable seller like Mauser, Digikey or in Germany Reichelt.
Don't forget NE5532 / 34 are unstable is the gain is too low.
I've come to the conclusions that probably 90% of the stuff I bought from aliexpress is fake garbage. Packaging often gives it away as these things are sold to make a quick buck, the people behind don't even try and simply rely on the fact that you cannot see the product until it has arrived to you. Molding is supposed to be uniform with a distinct matte finish, however quite some opamps I've do have a suspicious grinding pattern on top. Some comes with packaging pre-melted as if someone has cooked them before shipping.
Too true. On top of that their "dispute" system is rigged against the paying customer. I was recently ripped off on an emprom programmer, not a fake but a bait n switch scam. Had to do a chargeback on the credit card to get my money back. That site n its ilk are nothing more than the online version of "Vinny the fence"
I was once building a transmitter and getting not fake components was essential. But of course I first bought fake ones, until I got a recommendation where to buy.
if its the same product, even if its 'fake', i'll run it through some testing. if it holds up for what i need, i'll use it. if not, i'll keep looking.
so far, i've been pretty lucky.
They are proberly real, just stolen from the skip, production fails, out of tolerance etc.
This happened to Sandisk and Panasonic, and still is.
I once ordered a bunch of SPI NOR Flash Chips and got a good deal. They were sold as "new". On arrival I read out every single one and there were prewritten with some chinese Router Firmware. I contacted the seller and got to keep the parts while getting my money back. So now I always check my parts once I receive them.
We have seen a multi-storey mall in shenzhen China selling used parts such as motherboard chipsets, lan card chipset, vga chipset, even tan. caps. Selling used parts is a big market.
I had this problem when I bought 10 Mosfets (IRF540) on ebay to build the zvs that you designed. 7 did work fine but 2 just blew up and 1 didn't do anything
Just because there is difference in the labeling/package it doesn't necessary mean its fake.
A component can have name facture sources and each facture can have a different packaging process.
For a recent example Noctua fans manufactured on Chine and Taiwan have a slight different plastic color.
No wonder my projects keep blowing up!
Also I use bojack for my ics and transistors
I think they are better than anything else in my opinion
Haha yep. Fake components can be a reason ;-)
Lol or else its just what called the "learning curve"... but naaaah, I'm sure its the components 😉 lol
Actually i think the gate threshold voltage is the most important value next to the on resistance. It happened to me that a airsoft motor driver constantly blew up with 2 lipo cells because they didn't open up fully when the motor spun up. Replacements from Conrad fixed it.Actually i think the gate threshold voltage is the most important value next to the on resistance. It happened to me that a airsoft motor driver constantly blew up with 2 lipo cells because they didn't open up fully when the motor spun up. Replacements from Conrad fixed it.
We've once bought a batch of TLP923 opto IGBT drivers. Turns out they were some op-amps relabeled as optos. It was quite a loud boom when we powered a 30kW inverter after fitting new IGBT blocks and new "optos".
I would love to see a big Testvideo where you compare different types of fake products with the original ones and not only one specimen of each type. I hope for nice scientific graphics (scatter plots) like CNCkitchen provides in his testvideos. I would expect the fake ones to be manufactured in a similar way but they use also the bad one from a batch and sell them to lower the overall product price.
It's a bit questionable how useful this video, or even the suggested statistics would be. The cheaper components, for whatever reason (bad lot, begin/end-of-run batches, clones, etc.) probably have not been filtered with the same testing as the more expensive ones, i.e. they failed some test or were regarded as lesser just due to something known about their manufacture.
This likely varies greatly for each device you see on ebay or wherever-- some might be just fine, others not, and there's no correlation from one device to the next, so statistics for one are not going to suggest much about the others.
All you know is "the cheap ones are less likely to be fall within the expected performance range," but you won't ever know how often, or by how much they vary.
+1 i'd like to see him open them up so we can see what the physical difference is
@@stephens1393 many times if you decap them you see they are not even the same architecture as the original. It one thing to be a clone and be a poorly manufactured one and its completely different to be a product made to act like one just to fool the customer.
@@lunacyworks I guess it _would_ be useful to know, when you buy from an unknown source off of E-bay or Amazon, the rough percentages on the likelihood that you're going to receive a 1. genuine part, 2. a genuine or equivalent part with larger variation in specs, or 3. a completely different/inferior part with out-of-spec behavior.
It's _interesting_ to see examples of completely different parts "under the hood," but it's only actually useful if you can get an idea of how often something will go wrong if you order from these places. Otherwise this video is (or at least could be) just sensationalized click-bait playing on paranoia. How often have _you_ received a fake/inferior part? Is your experience just anecdotal, or the norm?
I'm almost certain that practically all of my components are fake :D The only ones that I know aren't fake are the microcontrollers and the components I've salvaged from broken brand-name devices.
Same hahaha, even though, you may even find some fake ones on such know brands too
@@satunnainenkatselija4478 Most probably not. Those are all more or less reliable sources. Of course, there is always a chance some fakes got through, but I wouldn't worry in your case
I, on the other hand, often but on eBay and AliExpress, so I very certainly have lots of fakes.
4:54 You connected the scope probes without ground lead. For signals in the ns range this is a bad setup. You basically characterized your measurement setup (incl. the overshoot and ringing), not your FET.
For proper scope measurements, always connect all ground leads, i.e., for each probe in use, connect its ground lead.
The most important takeaway from this is ALWAYS test your components if you are going to rely on them for anything serious or market ready. Even samples that are genuine can be missed by testing, if even tested at all.
This is particularly true if you have very specific tolerances or requirements, or doing weird exotic things like the recent flexible PCBs that are still very hit or miss with consistency.
When prototyping this fake components makes pain in the ass😑
Happens sometimes, yes....
I'm an electronics engineering student and recently my classmates and I were doing a practical work with logic gates, measuring their electrical characteristics. It was an odyssey because apparently the logic gates that we were using didn't work properly, and some of them didn't work at all or worked as a different logic gate. All of this happened because we were trying to save some money, but in the end, we had to spend more money to get what we supposed were original components. In my country, it is sometimes difficult to afford or find original or highly reliable components due to the economic situation not being as good as it was in the past.
I'm amazed at the effort they go to faking components with such low value.
Simply because the low value most will not try to get a refund, so it is profitable to sell a lot of cheap parts and get small amounts of money in. If the 10 $1 parts you got are fake most will simply order from somebody else. Thus if your fake cost you 10c, marking 10c, postage 30c you made 50c profit, compared to the real one where the part cost 50c, so you only made 20c. Small sellers not likely to get repeat customers, so selling the fake part, often bought in from another seller who got them for 1c, and sold for 10c, to multiple others, is profitable.
Might be QC fails, might be dead off the line, and dumpster dived out the plant, or run as a ghost shift for sale off the books, you never know.
You should test multiple original parts from different batches and maybe years apart in production date to test how much they spread.
Had a suspicious case recently in a prosumer Canon photo printer : PSU failed for no reason and upon post-mortem disassembly the faulty mosfet didn't look like a genuine toshiba part like the markings claim (TK12A65D). Said PSU is only outputting like 30-ish watts, so it's not like that mosfet worked hard in its life.
One time, I got a set of mosfets that were actually NPN BJTs that had a fake label! I’m glad I always test before I use cheapo components, otherwise I would have let a lot of magic smoke out.
The funny thing is they’re actually incredibly good quality BJTs!
The impossibility (in practice) to get real components is one of the worst, most disappointing fact of my life. Feel really miserable about this
This is SO timely. I just bought a box of Bojack LM358's. You're right....some bargains are indeed bargains while others are complete scams. Box of chocolates. Thank you !
This is the reason, why I buy the parts for project in the meanwhile at Mouser or Digikey
Don't forget Jameco.
@@John-oo9bu Never heard of them. Also RS-Components is legit
@@hardwarelabor1631 they've been in business for 45 years and are one of the top distributors.
I would recommend them equally with Mouser and Digikey 👍
@@John-oo9bu i will try them out
phuu, yeah...I am currently building a table saw with electric lift and tilt...and i spent the best part of today with sorting out problems with the H bridges for the relais.... End of the story... I was working with cheap mosfets from e bay. (2n7000) and all of them had different electrical propertys. Now it works, but it is always disapointing, to realize, that the falt is not on your side.... Bying of e bay is always a bit hit and miss...^^
I am paying 40 dollars for a ARM chip I paid 4 dollars for last year. Not surprisingly fake chips are common and very expensive scams have gone through the roof. I got hit by fake FTDI chips a few years ago. The fake chips would work fine then latchup and go thermonuclear!! Great video as always really enjoyed it. My best regards to you and the family. I also like those components packs. The capacitors packs are shocking quality so beware they explode
I’m a pinball technician and have been struggling with fakes for the last 6-7 years. Typical application is grounding solenoids. They are simply not as robust, for the most part.
Pinball technician is still a thing? I want a comeback of pinballs!
I once had to fire up pinball solenoids using irl540n fets, it's a scary inductive load at 50v. I ordered a few times from different sellers and they all blew up instantly, all 50 of them to be precisely. I finally bought from a well known store and they simply work forever.
I like the *EXAGERATED failure. Pins 4 and 8 were connected backwards which is the smoke release configuration for most 8 pin op amps 😂
Most frustrating problem I've had with cheap, probably fake, components from eBay and Aliexpress was when battery charger IC's status pin didn't act as described in the datasheet. Manufacturer had two variants, one with open-drain output and one with push-pull output. Part had markings of one, but was actually the other. Nothing else was off and as far as I can tell, they were probably factory reject with just wrong markings on them.
Mostly ordering from well known suppliers is cheaper than e.g. Ebay, at least for simple standalone components. Issues there are mostly shipping costs and sometimes minimum order quantities.
yeah ironically the ebay ones cost more even before shipping, after shipping they end up being like $7-10 per ic from eBay. absolutely wild
I like to think of various reasons why the fake ones cost less and why they are more prone to malfunction than an original product. For the cheaper cost characteristic, all they do is replicate the original component which saves them a ton of R&D costs and for higher degree of malfunction could be the reason of bad quality checking methods as they wouldn't know where to put more efforts into the component as they didn't make it and know of it fully in the first place
Wow didn’t realise how big of an issue this is! I think I’ve been stung with fake ATMel memory chips as they keep dying and we know it was a batch from eBay due to sourcing
I had some that either didn't take a value or were (unknowingly) PROMs.
At the end of the day everything is a matter of luck. My smartphone, chinese model from 2013 has definitely compromised parts inside. For 9 years I am still using the same battery and there are no signs of battery's aging or end of life. We are talking about probably 3500 to 4000 charge-discharge cycles unitl today. Same for the electronics, camera, buttons or display - everything works without any problems, at the same speed as in 2013. Same efficiency of the phone and no sings of overheating, display's reduced brigthness or dead pixels and so on. And I am using this phone quite harsh and without care - my phone saw incredible pollutions, vibrations, mechanical shocks, many many falls, intensive use of the battery... Still the same!
My wife changed 3 (three!) Iphones during these 9 years - battery, mechanics or the electronics inside.
The only issues I've ever had with fake components have been with 556, MAX7219, and ATMega328, all in DIP.
You got me curious about the ATMega, how did it underperform? What I can imagine is like higher rated parts (say the automotive/industrial rated ones) not being up to their specs in temperature or such, or worn EEPROMs that die way quicker from being salvaged from used stuff.
Maybe DIP is easy to copy or come by for salvaging?
@@Kalvinjj Most of them I couldn't bootload, and the ones I did manage to bootload had an unreliable internal oscillator. I didn't test any of the internal resistors or anything; it wasn't worth my time. I needed something fast and cheap, so I risked an Amazon pack.
@@greatscottlab As the big manufacturers seem to move away from DIP, I'm assuming there's a small vacuum that counterfeiters are filling. I mean, they might even be buying the manufacturing equipment from the OEM and just not bothering with QA/QC.
it's impossible for this guy to draw anything just ONCE.
Love the vids!
Where I work we've been stung by fakes. One of the most notable being an empty op-amp package. That was a nightmare.
But can I just say, at 6:58, the typical value is not a minimum value (the minimum value is blank for that datasheet). The typical value (3mV in this case) is where most devices are expected to be. They can be much better as may have been the case with one of the MOSFETs shown earlier in the video.
I have a very interesting story about it. I built a guitar amplifier, which used a NE555. Nothing worked at all just after the build. I tested everything and nothing. I even put the NE555 in another electronic device and it worked like a charm. But, while swapping the parts, I accidentally put a NE555 from a different “brand” on the faulty amplifier and…. VOILA! Worked like a charm! And both were fake apparently . Hahaha
I wonder what did you do with a 555 in a guitar amp, was it class D or something?
@@MisterTalkingMachine ooops. I confused the ICs. You are right to think it's strange. It was a NE5534*
Great video as always!
When I was young there was no alternative than buying components from special electronic shops.
Nowadays I buy many cheap parts but since I make low tech projects quality is not usually a problem. I never encountered a part that wasn't working.
I'm referring to LM family, BC family and 555 mostly!
Nice video mate
I also always use the budget friendly transistor tester
But the question that always boggles down my mind is
What if ? The transistor tester is fake or not upto the mark ?
That's an incredible inception, and one not to ignore!
Probably depends on how the circuit is designed, if it relies on tight tolerances it will likely perform quite badly even if it uses quality components, as there's always a slight variation in their true specs and assembly. Of course there's always that one section that needs good stuff on it or good calibration, so hope for the best that it was well done.
Good question. But good news is that I never experienced a broken Transistor tester.
@@Kalvinjj yes i was speaking about tolerances and of course the quality of the components used in the tester itself.lets hope that it's good!! thats the only thing we can do 😄
@@greatscottlab That's lucky for ya mate 😉
@@Kalvinjj Test known good items first. Write down that baseline, rather than comparing from the datasheet. If the tester reads 1v low every time, expect the one you're testing to be 1v low too.
My cheap tester seems to return results that are accurate to the datasheet, so I trust the results on questionable items.
I have experience with companies going out of their way to prevent you from using counterfeit parts by bricking them via their driver software.
Of course im talking about FTDI, who did so in the past with their FT232RL USB-uart Bridge. They took down that driver a while back but I still had to learn the hard way with modules I bought from banggood.
Fake components are okay for hobby use and I have used a lot of them before.
But for work a lot of the characteristics that don’t often get used for hobby use matter a lot. For example, we had pulse withstanding resistors burn up before during validation testing because it was not a genuine part. Also had issues with MOSFET’s SOA being met for SMPS designs. Even well known resellers and contract manufacturers have to deal with fake components now. Especially due to all the chip shortages.
Same, we have had faked diods burning up in testing. Not fun when the end user is in medical units with super high up time requirements
As being on the hobby side only, it still suck to get one fake on maximum power consumption, speed reaction or other unavailable capability... (the kind of basic characteristic a noob like my can look). I would prefer it recommend me a lower component specs or a no name brand than lying on spec.
I imagine some stuff like resonant circuits and alikes that rely a lot more on some finer aspects of the parts are the most affected ones, and of course the durability that you can't guarantee at all.
no. When you're a total beginner, they fakes might do, because you're probably not making high-performance stuff or really pay attention to engineering. But as you do more and more engineering, calculating how the thing you are building is supposed to perform, only to then find out after hours or days of debugging and verifying that it doesn't perform simply because there is a part significantly out of spec - that really really sucks.
I much prefer having genuine components, so that if the thing i built doesn't work, i know that it's misengineering or some other screwup of mine, not the parts.
The current state of supply and the crisis is forcing everyone to accept these parts as if they were the real deal. For more than one time I had to overlook this on a product prototype so I could show something to the customer. It also affects suppliers and distributors. What crap times to source electronic stuff.
Using just the transistor tester on some mosfets, I've seen wildly different Vt, Rds, etc values on parts (of the same supposed model) bought from different vendors on AliExpress, some way out of spec... and in some cases even wildly different values on parts received in the same order with identical markings. So it seems they're just re-marking random parts. I'm afraid to use them as replacements since the current and voltage ratings could be way off.
The cheap transistor tester only produces a very rough estimate of the values, since it uses non-standard testing procedures (like a lower frequency for capacitors and inductors). I guess the measure accuracy overall is only about ~15%
@@WorkinDuck Understood, but I'm not talking about comparing the values to the specs. I mean that one part will measure for instance and Rds of 2.1 ohms (consistently), and another one from the same lot purchased will measure 5.8 ohms (consistently). So they obviously aren't really the same part.
I like using the 'maybe fakes' for prototyping and experimentation to keep the costs down and use known genuine in deliverables.
Me encantó el video!
Desde que comencé a aprender electrónica he desarmado muchos aparatos viejos o descompuestos. Después de varios años he descubierto que muchas veces es más conveniente desarmar un aparato de buenas marcas para obtener componentes originales, y que son de mejor calidad que componentes nuevos genéricos, además de que ayudas con al medio ambiente reutilizando.
SSRs are notorious for putting small amperage chips in large claimed packages.
Wish there was a "how to spot a fake SSR" video, so we dont have to destroy one to find put.
Thermal camera, and stop the test when they overheat?
That's why I prefer to salvage original component from scrap electronic rather than buying the new questionable one.
Good idea ;-)
If you buy a suspected counterfeit component from an actually trusted supplier, ie not ebay, do report it to them. It's useful data that can help them clamp down on it.
I think what's most likely is:
1) legitimate rejects. (TI makes everything, but it fails their quality control)
2) relabeled parts from different manufacturers.
3) empty packages
i have a question though. Why are the rejects packaged? aren't parts supposed to be tested on a wafer, before they are put into the package? (might not work with parts with several dice inside, common in things like high-power ICs, optocouplers, mems...)
@@victortitov1740 very good question.
I was speculating, but maybe there's a bonding wire issue, a bad cut, or something not on the wafer?
Again, just speculation, but I'm thinking of what would be the easiest route for someone to sell a bootleg or counterfeit product.
Edit: doesn't Intel and AMD do that for some of their multicore products? It's a die with 8 cores but only 6 or 7 are good so use firmware to lock off defective ones.
Don't forget the simple acetone Q-Tip rub. The lettering on a fake one will rub off and the Q-Tip will be black. The real one will be silk screened and will not rub off. Not that these days the people producing fakes couldn't silk screen if they had the means to but, it's not likely.
Hi there! Here in my country, mostly we can't choice cheap or expensive....but the IRF 3205...from 6 units...3 died in tests!...neither in "production use"...when I found the expensive ones buyed them... and now I have many working fine for years. No mention the quality of the pins! 😔. Thanks for the video!
The worst fake we got at work was a batch of Optocouplers, IGBT gate drivers . Imagine the bang the drive unit got when we powered it on😃 turns out they were just IC's....
If its work critical always buy from a reputable dealer, but also know they sometimes get fake stock. great info 2x👍
As most of us cannot afford fancy multimeters and oscilloscopes to test everything, the best advice would be to forego ebay for saving pennies on electronic components and buy from reputable distributors :)
Here some local electronics store resell ebay/amazon DC/DC modules and those have red markings "Only for prototypes. Not to use in real products"
When I was in school we had a lab where we were to test the slew rate of an op amp but the test equipment wasn't good enough to measure it as the slew rate was at least an order of magnitude better than the spec. The specs are minimum or maximum values but the parts can be a lot better than the spec for no extra cost.
Perhaps it might be worth adding that the higher the spec of the component you're buying, the more likely it is to be a counterfeit. That's because for something as basic as an LM358, it's near impossible to get a cheaper opamp, so even suspect LM358s are going to perform about as well as a real LM358. On the other hand, it's relatively easy to re-label an LM358 as a higher spec opamp and sell it at a profit. The same reasoning applies to MOSFETs, power transistors, etc. where a cheaper, lower spec device can be passed off as a desirable higher spec one.
Yup, I've seen this exact scenario play out. Got a set of op07 and 358s. The former were fake for sure (did some basic testing) the lm358s seemed within spec
Thank you for your video.
Years ago NASA tested chips. Some chips were simply blocks of plastic with leads and no chip inside.
I worked on a system where I replaced PCBs - one or more a week. The PCBs needed premo parts and were repaired with seconds. Over 90 % downtime!
Lastly, from the late 90s, there was a "capacitor plague." These caps failed if not immediately within a few months. New computers failed shortly after purchase and most within 6 months.
Sometimes substandard components work fine. At other times, get the primo parts.
Watching you write while explaining how it works is very therapeutic. Thanks for the video
I am addicted to buying electronics. I have bought diy kits but I outgrew the pcbs that tell you where to put everything and the polarity. So I built a power supply. I have searched for other projects and found they almost always just jump to an arduino, rather than just build a circuit. Maybe you could do a short with a few of your favorite electronics books??