My take on fake parts

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chinoy

chinoy

Member
Joined 2022
#1
Just went thru a huge post on the LM3886 and a few on the TDA7294 on fake chips. With batch numbers which are not legit.
This seems to perplex a lot of people. When I built my first TDA7294 amp. The chips I got blew up the second power was connected.
Not being able to find original chips I found some which was marked Made in Singapore.
These worked. They were pushed to the chips power limits and it did not fail.

So here is my take on fake parts.
They are what we call in India backdoor parts.
I first ran into this problem in 2002 when I launched my first Digital Ignition. Only to find people were selling digital Ignitions for 1/10th the price.
So a year was spent trying to solve this problem.
These units were all stamped just like the original factory units. As part of my investigation I even purchased a few and opened them up. To find they were legit.
Finally just as I was about to give up. The mystery was resolved for me. These back door parts are stolen. Either from inside the factory or while in transit from the factory to OEMs.
Theft of chips and electronic circuits is a multi million dollar industry. To avoid being tracked its a very common practice to file off batch numbers and just replace them with garbage.
The first guy in the chain got the parts for close to free. He then files off the batch number Prints something different on it. And then sells it to re-sellers for 1/10th the price. The re-seller than marks it up by 100-200% and sells it to the customer.

Just thought I would share this story. It fits perfectly with what we are seeing happening with fake transistors and parts.
In fact goto any whole sale market in any major city and you will see them taking delivery of large consignments with no paperwork.

This is rampant in countries like China and India. And in the USA on ebay.
Stolen parts go for about a cent on the dollar. When purchased from the first guy. The final re-seller makes about 100-300% margin.
When it comes to other parts like Caps. They have a time expiry date i.e. if they are not sold in x months after manufacture their values fall. And they are unfit for regular sales channels so these also get dumped for cheap on the market.
There are guys who rebrand a similar IC or a poor quality IC but the numbers are small.
If you want more info on this look into the stealing of ICs and the volumes that are stolen every year.
I have seen both types i.e. crappy / wrong products rebranded. And original items rebranded.
There are many legit chip companies that do this on the side.
 
#2
I think it is quite a bit more complex than that.

There are companies who genuinely buy unused stock from EMS and manufacturers and in the areas with large electronics manufacturing ecosystems there is no problem selling off excess inventory if you have a partial reel of something left over from a prototyping run or an EOL product. Most likely the company buying from you will have covered the cost of all inventory anyway, so anything that isn't needed and can be turned into cash instead of fillng up the shelves is just a bonus.

Similarly, there are people who have figured out that remarking e.g. a DIP-opamp can turn a $0.10 part into a $1.00 or even a $10.00 part. Sell a few handfuls and it's probably not worth it, but sell a few thousand and it looks a bit more interesting. If you can manage to obscure your supply chain flow you can probably keep this up for a while and then suddenly it starts looking like a real business. Parts shortages from the authorised sources in many cases force customers to go on the grey market to keep production running which feeds the industry.

If everyone was honest the faking would die out quickly because rumors would spread, but just a few dishonest folks (buyers/agents) make this difficult and the trade continues. Also, in the beginning I don't think people took this super seriously and QC on entry didn't always do a proper validation of the parts to weed out fakes, but you can be pretty sure that this is something a serious manufacturerer will have stepped up massively over the last decade or so.

Last but not least there are also people "reconditioning" (make what you will of that term) used parts and putting them back in the market. Again, a few dishonest people in the supply chain probably makes that easier and in some cases your quality might not even notice it. However, long-term reliability of your end-product might suffer and of course your QA processes and documentation don't like it either because you can't prove the provenance of your parts.

I don't know if there is a massive theft of parts for remarking and/or reselling but of course it is possible. In that case I guess it would make sense for thieves to concentrate on expensive parts that are usually in short supply (processors and memory etc.) and therefore easy to shift. Just like people breaking into your hourse would steal your jewellery and your case,but most likely leave your CD collection 🙂
 
#4
Some A brands used to have their unsold overstock destroyed. I witnessed this a few times at a recycling center. Brand new sealed cartons full with very good electrolytic caps produced only a few years earlier. This was before Covid, my idea is that today they sell everything they can find 🙂
 
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