16 Dec
2011
16 Dec
'11
12:11 p.m.
On 12/16/2011 11:50 AM, Holm Tiffe wrote:
While I can't speak to the provenance of this particular one, Chinese
component clones are a very real, very large problem in the electronics
industry, making it into the industry news media each and every week.
Given the state of the industry at this point, there's no reason at all
to suspect it to be a hoax.
May be Dave, I had Problems with some Transistors in the past,
but they are made from automatic fabrics.
That thing on the picture can't be made this way, and producing this as a
mass product would be more expansive than making the entire electrolytic
capacitor itself. This thing for sure is a hoax.
I don't agree. It certainly *may* be, but there's no compelling
reason to say so "for sure". I work in the electronics industry;
counterfeit components are a very real, very big, very current problem
here. That's not me guessing, wondering, or saying it may be so; this
is a well known thing throughout the industry...a simple verifiable
fact. There was another big article about it in a weekly trade rag just
yesterday, and there's lots of new legislation happening to try to curb it.
As far as the capacitor-within-a-capacitor in the picture, don't
underestimate the cheapness of Chinese labor. I'm sure they have
children cranking those out by the hundred every day. With bigger
capacitors costing several dollars apiece, especially high-temp and
low-ESR capacitors, the demand for which is skyrocketing now, it's
probably even more profitable than relabeling cheap chips as expensive
ones and flooding them onto the market.
>
http://www.neurotica.com/misc/chinese_capacitor.jpg
Almost laughed out loud at that one. Seems like it would cost more to
make the fake if it weren't done by the millions.
Don't think that this one is real. It is on the web for years now and still
reappearing from time to time. 
I have no problem when you say, that there may be
Rubicon lookalikes on
the market that doesn't hold the specs, but not such a thing.
Remeber: Chineses are making cheap things, but they aren't idiots for sure.
They're certainly quite smart; a lot smarter than the rest of us it
seems. So, since they're making and exporting counterfeit components by
the container load, they must see quite a profit from it.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
New Kensington, PA