Are duplicate ICs really exist?

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TRONICLK
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Are duplicate ICs really exist?

Post by TRONICLK » Mon Dec 24, 2012 12:32 am

When we explain customers that we only do Original and Genuine ICs, they use to ask this question. "Are duplicate ICs really exist?". Some customers might have felt that we are just lying to sell our products at high price. Some stated, this is available at this price at Pettah.

As a legitimate company TRONIC.LK (SKYTRONIC (Pvt) Ltd.) only provided original and genuine ICs and components as our aim is to become the best component sourcing company in Sri Lanka.

Here is a good example of AD633JN IC from Analog Devices. A customer who came to us showed this duplicate IC and stated as it doesn't work. Then we showed the IC we have and he was shocked. He bought that for very cheap, but he realized cheap doesn't work always.

Genuine Chip
AD633JN.JPG
AD633JN.JPG (9.39 KiB) Viewed 6671 times
Duplicate
duplicate.JPG
duplicate.JPG (27.55 KiB) Viewed 6670 times
This is just one visible example. But there are some cases which you won't be able to identify the difference. Just be aware of the product quality. Always ask the seller, the technical spec of what he is selling. If he doesn't know what he is selling, never ever buy from them. Because when you meet a problem, they will never help you out.

We are not in a race. We are not competing with anybody. But we will work harder to introduce some standard to this industry. That's why TRONIC.LK came in to existence.
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Re: Are duplicate ICs really exist?

Post by SemiconductorCat » Tue Dec 25, 2012 8:24 pm

Original chip from AD have gone through the most modern fabrication process too.
And some verification process also.


But I don't think Chinese nameless fabs do have such precise fabrication process.

So they may have very different transist frequecy and cutoff frequencies.Low values compared
with the original chip. So in a microwave application that chip behave ad normal than we
expected. There are people who work with instrumental devices like these, but for a newbie
this is something asking for new troubles.

The people who have 10+ of experience as a repair technician/product engineer have the proper
experience on these. They could see the device and see whether this will work when I fix this
to target board or not. For a example this device may work for a SMP power supply (100KHz)unit.But not
for a RF filter board(>1Mhz) .



As I already mentioned poor fabrication technology leads low cutoff and transist frequencies. This device may
work for low frequency applications without any trouble, but for high frequency applications this is asking for
additional trouble.

The device fabrication technology is something that we should consider in top. An Experienced technician could
could probe the device to work in that situation with little effort. But for a newbie, he may get disappointing , and may
be that will be his last circuit that he learnt in his electronic life. The same thing is true with poor quality measuring
equipment which are sensitive to AC cross-talk EMI. I have used more than 5+ digital multimeters, even experienced
guys telling that they need to buy expensive products like Fluke. But if they know periodically what's going on
they could probe that device to work BTW. Anyway that's why I'm not recommending a digital multimeter to a
electronic newbie, but I just recommand an analog one. Because analog one does have a damping factor and cross-talk
energy get attenuated due to damping friction.



So in summary, it's not all about device not working. The device is working properly, but not under original
conditions or parameters. experienced person could deal with that,but newbie can't.
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Re: Are duplicate ICs really exist?

Post by Neo » Thu Jan 03, 2013 4:49 pm

Yes. Duplicates really exist.. Another good example....

This is about the STK ICs that are commonly available. According to what we know, Sanyo who are the original manufacturers of STK series amplifiers has stopped several ICs on the series. If you have bought a duplicate/fake IC as below, don't ever complain the STK series for having less quality :lol:
fake-example.jpg
fake-example.jpg (57.84 KiB) Viewed 6604 times
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Re: Are duplicate ICs really exist?

Post by Nipuna » Sat Jan 05, 2013 8:54 am

Wow Neo :o

All the STK ICs I have ever seen are all have the similar look like the duplicate one. :o

I didn't know until now that the original one is very different than the duplicate one :o

There is a huge difference not only the quality but the appearance also :o
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Re: Are duplicate ICs really exist?

Post by SemiconductorCat » Sat Jan 05, 2013 11:36 am

Neo wrote:Yes. Duplicates really exist.. Another good example....

This is about the STK ICs that are commonly available. According to what we know, Sanyo who are the original manufacturers of STK series amplifiers has stopped several ICs on the series. If you have bought a duplicate/fake IC as below, don't ever complain the STK series for having less quality :lol:
fake-example.jpg
I'm not a pro in audio industry, but what has happened here is very clear, The quality is decreased due to terminal
noise and terminal runaway[most probably fly the device beyond it's recoverable ]
. So there's no doubt it requires a precise fabrication process to archive a good quality.

But complain only attitude does not work in electronic industry either. That's why techniques like these exists already.
if we stop complain and use our patience then,

Image
FYI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentation_amplifier

if a device is not working , then we have to probe it to work. That will make you a good engineer or a technician ,but
in industry it's more cheaper to buy original parts.

And asking for lots of trouble, From my experience I have cost my
father around 11,000/-rs loss using a cheap E13001 , cos the duplicate was not designed to work under high voltages,
so Armstrong oscillator become unstable and it went out for terminal runaway by shifting it's operating point, and
sparks generated a higher reverse voltage and fry our expensive LED panel.

Image

So , after-all, if you want to dig into electronics then playing with these instrumental devices may be fun, but in
medium industry [not huge research labs] it's not fun.

So if you working with duplicate devices, fine but be careful always .
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