11-08-2021, 03:14 PM
Capacitor plague was a while ago, last devices affected being made round 2007.
Many perfectly legitimate manufacturers were affected - it was caused by a large batch of incorrectly formulated electrolyte used by many manufacturers, so a completely different issue.
Fake components, e.g rebranding cheap components as more expensive ones or using QA rejects and labeling them as good parts is widespread, especially if the component is expensive. Audio caps and semiconductors are particularly susceptible.
The bottom line is that if quality and reliability needs to be guaranteed, only buy from a source that verifies the whole supply chain, e.g. Farnell/RS etc. Occasionally, even they can be caught out, but it's very rare. If they say part X is from manufacturer Y, it almost certainly is - they do a lot of work, hence the cost premium. Buying off eBay or similar and all bets are off - maybe ok, maybe not.
Larger product manufacturers will carry out their own QA on each supplied batch and will carry out detailed logging of which suppliers' batch a given component comes from and in what product s/n that device was used, so that if a problem is subsequently identified in a batch, the affected products can be recalled.
Many perfectly legitimate manufacturers were affected - it was caused by a large batch of incorrectly formulated electrolyte used by many manufacturers, so a completely different issue.
Fake components, e.g rebranding cheap components as more expensive ones or using QA rejects and labeling them as good parts is widespread, especially if the component is expensive. Audio caps and semiconductors are particularly susceptible.
The bottom line is that if quality and reliability needs to be guaranteed, only buy from a source that verifies the whole supply chain, e.g. Farnell/RS etc. Occasionally, even they can be caught out, but it's very rare. If they say part X is from manufacturer Y, it almost certainly is - they do a lot of work, hence the cost premium. Buying off eBay or similar and all bets are off - maybe ok, maybe not.
Larger product manufacturers will carry out their own QA on each supplied batch and will carry out detailed logging of which suppliers' batch a given component comes from and in what product s/n that device was used, so that if a problem is subsequently identified in a batch, the affected products can be recalled.
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