which components to buy from and where?

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roadey_carl

Joined Jun 5, 2009
137
Hello all,
After recently buying a batch of 30 "IRF3205" for £0.40 per piece on eBay (the seller no longer exists), I've discovered they are fake and WELL out of specification (Rds = 0.48ohm)
I thought that at £0.40p each there was a good chance they would be real as the ones from genuine distributors weren't much more expensive, I didn't think much more of it.

I feel such a fool for trying to save a few quid but I am lucky enough to be able to swallow the cost and move on - lesson learnt!!

So I'm asking you, what do you buy from unauthorised sellers and authorised sellers?
I'm asking as a hobbies and not going into mass production.
 

cockatoo

Joined Dec 23, 2017
11
g'day carl , i seem to get lots of "fakes" lately off ebay , but i think it is more likely that , unscrupulous dealers are selling faulty batches of components from factorys . my opinion is , because they are so cheap , only 1 to 10% of people will complain . so there is money to be made ..in all fairness , there are lot more honest sellers though
 

dl324

Joined Mar 30, 2015
16,845
Buy from reputable resellers (Mouser, Digikey, Newark, Jameco, etc). Saving a few pennies isn't worth what it will cost you in troubleshooting time; even for a hobby project.

It used to be that people selling electronic components on eBay were selling odd lots of genuine new old stock parts that were acquired from legitimate sources. Now there are Sellers who stock many items of unknown source (or maybe they know they're likely counterfeit). Some Sellers even post pictures of products that show clear signs of being counterfeit.

It has gotten so bad on eBay that I wouldn't buy much of anything that ships from China. Sellers in China will learn and eventually start drop shipping from other countries.

Good feedback scores on eBay are meaningless now.
 

recklessrog

Joined May 23, 2013
985
Don't forget R.S components also sell only genuine parts, I use them and CPC/Farnell and very rarely over very many years have any problems.
They are the two companies I recommend. I have used some U.K based independent component suppliers selling N.O.S parts (new old stock) with success, but I would not buy from China.
 

Thread Starter

roadey_carl

Joined Jun 5, 2009
137
Yeah, I think I've learnt my lesson.

I agree with all the comments. I'll still buy LED's, resistors and basic IC's from eBay or aliexpress as I've yet to encounter problems with them.
I definitely wont be buying anything else from third party's again!
 

dl324

Joined Mar 30, 2015
16,845
I'll still buy LED's, resistors and basic IC's from eBay or aliexpress as I've yet to encounter problems with them
I'd recommend otherwise. No name resistors can be a pain in the a**. The leads tend to be too skinny and who knows what else they skimped on.

I'd assume that all semiconductors are salvaged, relabeled, rejects, or some other undesirable category. It's just not worth the risk to save a few cents. Few would be capable of doing 100 percent incoming QA (they typically thow in some good ones).

I have several LED flashlights that have issues with defective LEDs. LED lifetime should be measured in decades, but that doesn't consider defective or low quality parts. One has a flashing LED caused by a defective wirebond (blinks after warming up).

Even if you found a "reputable" source, Chinese manufacturers are notorious for cutting back on quality over time in ways that aren't obvious to maximize their profit. Reputable companies have found that out the hard way.
 
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ebp

Joined Feb 8, 2018
2,332
Counterfeit components have been a problem for decades and there have been cases where counterfeits have found their way into legitimate regular distribution channels. There have been numerous occasions where lead times from legit channels have really stretched out, so manufacturers have turned to brokers for parts. This has lead to some broken hearts when usually-reliable brokers have been burned by counterfeits. (The longest lead time I've ever been quoted was 54 weeks. I waited a full year for some 74LS138s during The Great TTL Famine.)

Stuff from China is hugely variable. I've bought SMA connectors for non-demanding applications that seemed to be very well made, at least visually (which is not a good way to judge an RF connector, but if it looks bad it will be bad). Chinese unbranded BNC connectors have been uniformly horrible junk, in my experience, as have banana plugs. You'd think they could manage to make decent banana plugs, but no.
Some manufacturers and many vendors are flat out liars and sell trash. Some are reputable and sell good quality items. There are copies of name-brand products (e.g. Bonens and numerous other variations derived from Bourns trimmers that use Bourns part numbers) and copies of the copies. There are counterfeit powdered iron magnetic cores with the same part numbers and colors as Micrometals. I ran across one manufacturer of some sort of electronic component (can't remember what) whose primary business was fasteners for shoes. Maybe what they produced would be OK, but I wouldn't risk it.

I completely quit buying any AC-mains operated products directly from China. Much of it has fraudulent safety agency certification markings and much of it is so badly designed and built that no safety agency anywhere in the world would approve it. I've seen wooden toys with FCC certification markings (admittedly a wooden to is unlikely to generate EMI or RFI).

I don't know what is around these days since I haven't looked for a long time, but there used to be brokers who specialized in selling surplus components that they purchased from legit manufacturers, distributors, assembly houses, etc. They weren't fly-by-night and would stand behind their product. I've bought a few things form such vendors and been generally pleased. Sometimes there are excellent deals to be had because the vendor doesn't know what they have. I once got a large lot of TL431s in TO-92 for about 2 cents each because the vendor thought they were just small signal transistors.

I used to buy things from Deal Extreme. Most of what I got was fairly decent, but some very poor. They have been around for several years and will accept returns, but the process is very slow. My attitude with all of the vendors in China is that I won't buy anything I can't afford to simply write off. I won't buy any single item priced at more than a few tens of dollars. On top of everything else, most of the vendors make customs declarations that are fraudulent, which can get you in trouble with your own country's customs agency. You really don't want that to happen if you rely on being able to import things.

My advice when buying on ebay: Unless it is a vendor with which you have lots of experience and trust, if there is a problem with an order open a "case" immediately. Don't let the vendors cries of "please don't" move you in the slightest. If you do open a case with ebay and the vendor comes through satisfactorily, be sure to inform ebay very promptly so the vendor isn't penalized unjustly, but look out for your own interests first, and don't feel the least bit bad about it.
 

philba

Joined Aug 17, 2017
959
I buy a fair number of components each year but am strictly a hobbyist.

distis: most things. Rs and Cs, ICs, microcontrollers

ebay/aliX: LEDs, some connectors, some switches, LCDs, some assemblies

When I buy from china, it's always with the possibility of getting garbage. I expect to have to experiment with them. And with the full expectation of perhaps tossing them.

An example, I use a fair number of USB connectors in projects (for power as well as USB) and the cost can add up pretty quickly. So, I took a chance on a lot of 50 from china. Cost is about 1/10th of disti cost. I was able to make them work though had to adjust the footprint to increase the solder bonding area for the shell to make it physically more secure. At least the vendor had an actual footprint drawing though following it causes DRC errors that I have to ignore to get a PCB made. I will probably use better connectors (JAE) for projects that will take a lot of insertions/stress.

There are a number of products that you have to buy from china. Addressable LEDs for example. The WS281x series simply aren't carried by mainstream distis.
 

bertus

Joined Apr 5, 2008
22,270
Hello,

There are many documents on the internet about counterfit parts.
The documents do not only cover eletronics.

Bertus
 

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MaxHeadRoom

Joined Jul 18, 2013
28,617
I buy the odd item off ebay/China but for most I go to Digikey, a little more $$'s but Very fast delivery, at the door next day air.
China delivery is hit and miss, the longest was this week when I just received a couple of items that were 3 months to the day from order!!
Max.
 

ebp

Joined Feb 8, 2018
2,332
I bought some odds and ends from Amazon marketplace vendors from China a year ago. Three months was about typical wait time. I don't know how they can offer "free airmail shipping" - it must cost a fortune to keep stuff up in the air, circling the Earth for 3 months. My suspicion is that they get cheap shipping by using available cargo capacity on passenger aircraft, so stuff can wait a long and unpredictable time. I also suspect that the warehouses are last-in-first-out. If you order at a busy time, your stuff gets shoved to the back of the warehouse with a bulldozer as they add more at the front. It's not unusual to get something you ordered last month before something you ordered 2 months ago, with both supposedly shipped a few days after ordering.

I started buying from DigiKey when it was a hobbyist supplier that had a catalog of about 4 pages. (trivia for the day: the ND that appears at the end of most DigiKey catalog numbers stood for "no discount" - they used to offer discounts based on aggregate order value, but some items didn't qualify so they had -ND catalog numbers; I have no idea why that wasn't dropped years ago). Largely the same for Future Electronics, though they seemed to be aiming at the industrial market right from the early days. I remember Jameco from when it was James Electronics - they used to get some interesting surplus stuff. That jerk Tesla was forever scooping some of the cool stuff I wanted from some of the other surplus dealers. And that guy, Eddy-something-or-other.
 

takao21203

Joined Apr 28, 2012
3,702
I used to sell MAOAM stripes, as a result they are now again broadly available + Haribo released new MAOAM product lines quite a few.
I dont know exactly but I think numerous Americans did keep enquiring about them after seeing them sold online.

Some years ago there were just a small amount of one stripes kind, now theres a lot of different MAOM products available everywhere.

I dont sell them anymore right now.

Blue and green neon lamps, audio 1:1 transformers, a few years ago youd have difficulty to find them. Now the chinese have these stocked.

I was the first to offer Intel 8080 at low price, recently theres no shortage of old CPUs to buy online.
As a result my own sales dropped to 1/5 or less than that.

They copied my listings a lot so I rather try to sell stuff they cant get easily.

Also old 2SA and 2SC series distributors dont have these, but these are freshly made in India.
Original japanese transistors from the 1970s radio era, think they are just not avalable, but interesting for hobbysit
since theres so many old schematics around, and they arent too bad.
Even the BC108 has been produced again as plastic.

I do sell decommissioned parts, capacitors series that Vishay for instance stopped to make, audiophiles are a good market,
they want the branded expensive parts, good of course if they are decommissioned and you can get hold of some inventory.

Carbon comp resistors even + thermionic valves, VFD displays. You name it.

So as for the topic.

You should take a look the shop as such as you would in real life, if they sell lingerie, imitation jewellery and even sex toys,
you can maybe think how much they know about the electronics they sell (right, nothing). If theres no description
or bad english, this is the help you will get if the parts dont work.

Junk parts I have sold maybe 50 kilograms or 100, this is old parts and few pieces now worth selling on their own, pretty much smashed together and sold by weight. Recently a chinese copied off this idea, theres now parts kits sold by weight on Aliexpress

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/CNI...c-polyester-capacitor-Random/32808025092.html

Distributors dont have these old capacitors but audiophiles and DIY radio makers like them.

If you could show some counterfeit parts here with actual proof they are fake?

Recently I have customers from Taiwan China Korea and Japan for old parts, simply the availability is not so good.
And Russia too. These parts are genuine as such, just old, and decommissioned.

Im a little afraid start selling the Zero PI for sure its not easy for beginner so if it doesnt work, I get the claim,
I think a high risk item to sell.

Ferrites I actually buy most of them from distributors, always have to buy larger amounts to get a discount.

I have not come accross fake parts so far, DIY kits sometimes have parts missing, but also distributors dont have them,
only a few have DIY kits for soldering and here in Europe the price would be quite high.

So over the years by what I sell and how I sell, this gets copied off after a while, I have some presence on the market directly or indirectly and I know many of the larger sellers.

In recent months I have removed maybe 200 listings that didnt sell or only very poorly.

I had some 200pcs small Mitsumi motors, didnt sell for more than a year, but in the UK recently Ive sold most of them, old inventory, genuine, distributors dont have these kinds of parts.
 

be80be

Joined Jul 5, 2008
2,072
Yeah, I think I've learnt my lesson.

I agree with all the comments. I'll still buy LED's, resistors and basic IC's from eBay or aliexpress as I've yet to encounter problems with them.
I definitely wont be buying anything else from third party's again!
I don't no about that I got 500 blue led's the ones that worked where nice but only 100 of them worked. But I've had great luck with.
http://www.taydaelectronics.com
 
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