Buying stuff from China.

[(*steve*)]

So I wanted some 4060's, not for anything that I really cared about, and I wasn't in a hurry, and the price for 10 of them from China was less than the cost of one locally (and they would deliver to my door).

This is how they were packaged inside the padded envelope:

Not only in non-anti-static foam, but also inside a non-anti-static plastic bag.

And then when I removed them from their rather unsafe packaging, it was clear that the packaging was also not entirely protective mechanically:

Oh well. They were salvageable...

They're now in slightly better packaging:

It's only a few layers of aluminium foil around the same foam, but it's enough to effectively short the pins together.

Any guesses as to if these are genuine

I have ordered stuff before and it has arrived in tubes. Oh well, you get what you pay for...

 

[alfa88]

You did okay. I've gotten components that were supposed to be new but were scorched or green with corrosion and out of spec. I'll never learn. Some wall warts I got were shockingly (no pun intended) of inferior quality. It seems like most electronics stuff is made in China so what are we to do?

 

[(*steve*)]

I tend not to be VERY wary about purchasing anything that connects to the mains.

And anything else I purchase I both quarantine, and do not assume to be genuine.

 

[jimwill48]

I have had good luck ordering from China and Hong Kong. Packaging was good pricing can't be beat for common items. If from eBay I always make sure they have a feedback rating of at least 99.5%. The one time I ordered something from someone with a 98.8% (clock movements) terrible packaging even thou the parts were good...

 

[KrisBlueNZ]

Definitely, avoid Chinese adapters. They may use mains wire that's far thinner than it should be, to save copper. I've had one where the insulation was so poor that the outer insulation broke around the plug when moderately bent, and the insulation around the cores flakes off with a little prodding.

I've also found circuit boards many years old (old stock, perhaps salvaged from the rubbish stream), and noise suppression components omitted for economy.

There are probably many worse stories that others can tell.

 

[batkin]

I've been getting a lot of components from China recently and all of the chips have come with the same packaging but I've never seen any damage to components. The prices can end up unbelievable low sometimes. I did manage to pick up 1800 assorted ceramic capacitors for $2.99 with free shipping. The title was labeled incorrectly as 1PF to 224PF which probably contributed to the very low price. I figure at that price I can handle a few potentially bad pieces.

 

[KrisBlueNZ]

Watch out for the Class 2 and 3 multi-layer capacitors! Low-quality ones can have very poor performance. Also, we (at my previous job) had significant trouble with field failures of a particular brand of 0.1 uF MLCCs in a through-hole package. They went extremely leaky (a few hundred ohms, typically) for no obvious reason. Could have been vibration, perhaps.

There are a number of good articles on EDN (see http://www.edn.com/search?keyword=ceramic capacitors) that will make you look at Class 3 and even Class 2 MLCCs in a whole new light. Even those from reputable companies.

As for the anonymous Chinese ones, I would keep well away from them. Who knows whose dumpster they were scrounged from!

 

[Rleo6965]

How long it will take the shipment arrive in Ausralia?
I also ordered Iron powder core from china and its almost a month and still not received my items. Philippines was very close to China than Australia.

According to the seller. They already shipped same day ordered.

 

[shrtrnd]

I can't see the markings on the IC's, but they could well be genuine, though I would guess
they were salvaged from scraped equipment. China buys a lot of scrap gear and pulls anything
they think they can re-sell.
Don't get me wrong, that's not all they do.
We've got an electronics salvage yard in town that buys-up brand-new components from
manufacturers that have left-overs from production runs they want to get rid of.
The salvage yard re-sells the high-end stuff for whatever they can get, and once a
week a Chinese national comes in and buys what-ever is left for .45 cents a pound.
The salvage yard is happy to get something, and the stuff gets shipped to China to be
re-sold around the world.
It makes it extremely difficult to identify the new components from the salvaged components,
not to mention the people making counterfeit parts and mixing those in.
But hey, the Chinese are finding-out that (sometimes unscrupulous) capitalism works
if you want to make money.

 

[(*steve*)]

How long it will take the shipment arrive in Ausralia?

Between 7 and 30 days. A few even longer. The shorter times are a rarity

I can't see the markings on the IC's, but they could well be genuine, though I would guess they were salvaged from scraped equipment. China buys a lot of scrap gear and pulls anything they think they can re-sell.

I don't think these are pulls. But the markings seem to be rubbing off where I've touched them. You can see that in the photos. Not a great sign.

 

[wdancer]

Places like DX.com and HobbyKing have fairly average quality. Listen to Kris when he says not to buy capacitors and anything that goes to mains, though. As for gray market ICs, you will get what you pay for. I definitely feel for all of you in Australia and New Zealand, your prices are insanely high compared to what I pay for, even though they go the same distance in the supply chain.

I do have to warn you that the tin foil is not a good choice for static dissipation. They should be in static dissipative foam that has a resistance of, I believe, 10kOhms/cm. Foil is worse than just leaving them on a workbench.

 

[shrtrnd]

Nope. Original manufacturer markers are made NOT to rub-off, that's why counterfieters
usually just paint over them.
Look at the bright side, if you rub the covering off, you'll see who actually made
the chips, underneath the paint. (unfunny humor).
ps. wdancer has a point.

 

[(*steve*)]

I do have to warn you that the tin foil is not a good choice for static dissipation.

It's not being used to dissipate static. It's being used to ensure all the pins are at the same potential. After that I don't really care.

And you may have noticed the static dissipative bag they're sitting on. That's where the foil covered foam lives.

 

[Solidus]

Yep. Legitimate fabs (usually) laser-etch the marks into the top of the package.

That being said, I'm doubtful of the fact that these 4060's are any different from legitimate ones...if it's one thing that the country with the million-man army does correctly, it's figuring out how to replicate what the rest of the world does to the T...and quickly.

I have ordered a few 555s from China sources, and a preliminary sheet said "Take care to no more apply 12V to pins". Needless to say, I now pay the extra 0.5 cent per IC to get them from a verifiable distributor.

Moral of the story - if it works, great, but stay wary of what comes in the mail.

 

[goldfist]

Last time to ordered chips that came direct from China off of ebay they were found to be clearly salvaged from boards. It appears that they must have a business out there that yanks from sockets / solder sucks working chips from old hardware and someone sorts them and puts them into tubes and sells them as good parts. I only ordered them up because I couldnt beat the price for a full tube of chips for the price of less than $5 with shipping. They were optoisolators and all of them worked even though you could clearly see they were once soldered into something else and some of the opposite corner legs were shorter from being cut and clinched to whatever they came out of.

 

[Rleo6965]

I saw a TV Documentary of some salvage warehouses in China. Workers placed computer and psu board on top of molten lead. Just the pcb underside touching the molten lead. Then start prying components . connector, transformer and ic sockets using plier and tweezers.

According to them. They able to recycle plastic, copper , tin and even gold from processor. Probably components that tested working was sold cheap.

 

[KrisBlueNZ]

That's another good reason to avoid these components. Imagine the health and safety risks to the salvage workers.

 

[jimwill48]

Maybe I've been lucky, but everything I have ordered from China has been new and unused.

 

[shrtrnd]

Heck, that's probably because nowadays, EVERYTHING is made in China.

 

[Rleo6965]

Just received my ordered 20 pcs Iron Powder Core from China. Item were new and not salvaged parts.