Your Components are probably FAKE! Soooo is that BAD?

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 >:(

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.

Some "fakes" could also be factory rejects, parts which didn't meed the specifications in in-house tests, which get recirculated into shady markets.

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 love how you recommend to get a cheap transistor tester made from the cheap fake parts you want to test, to test the parts :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!)

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.

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)

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.

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.

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

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!

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)

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...

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.