The current situation has been exploited by various scammers who try to sell fake components or parts that have probably been discarded by the manufacturer during their output inspection. For these reasons, RACOM has been forced to implement new entry inspection processes. Supplies from unverified sources have to be carefully controlled at a huge additional cost because we have encountered some incredible cases…
Fake components, where a case from another part is used, the original marking is sanded off and replaced with another, can be detected quite easily using a microscope. Harder to detect at first glance is an original part that has been discarded from production. Here we have to use a 3D X-ray and look inside.
In the photo gallery we show you one example for all. Here you can see how someone has invested their efforts and stacked parts from different production batches (the last letter differs in the designation) into the reel. A manufacturer would never do that. The next photo is from a 3D x-ray. Bonds or their inter-connections are missing in the most of the parts, see the markings on the photo. To confuse the buyer, the first hundred or so parts on the reel were perfectly fine.
So, it is not enough to check only samples before receiving delivery of a larger quantity. This again makes the whole process longer and more expensive. In many cases, we have to check every single component, otherwise there is a risk that the whole of the assembled boards will be degraded or, in a worse case, the defect or instability will only become evident after the product has been deployed with the customer.
Thanks to the experience and enormous efforts of our staff, we are able to detect all fraud attempts and our production continues to run smoothly at 100% quality. We apologize in advance for any potential delays, but you can see from the above examples that serious manufacturers have it tough today.
