Imitation is flattery but counterfeits are dangerous
Feb 6, 2019
Markets are flooded with counterfeit parts from the Far East, particularly in the electronics industry. AC-DC and DC-DC converters are widely affected with low quality parts distributed through ‘grey’ unofficial channels often with invalid approval marks and poor performance. Additionally, some parts do not meet their advertised safety ratings posing a risk to equipment and personnel. In this article, some of the dangers are highlighted with case examples of misleading and illegal practices.
Hallstatt is a 16th century village in the Salzkammergut region of Austria with picturesque houses lining the shores of the Hallstätter See with the Dachstein mountains as a dramatic backdrop.
Hallstatt Austria, credit Nick Csakany
Its many thousands of tourist visitors must have included some Chinese because they took back not just memories but also plans to recreate the village is minute detail in Guangdong province as an up-market residential complex. The $940 million ‘Chinese copy’ of the village is hardly meant to deceive and residents of the Austrian version actually attended its opening ceremony, flattered that their home village was so admired.
‘Hallstatt’ Guangdong, credit Hanno Böck
Some far eastern copies have a much darker side though; we’re all familiar with stories of designer watches and clothing being ‘ripped off’ and even well-known makes of western cell-phones being copied shamelessly, but electronic component parts are being targeted as well. When these ‘fake’ parts are innocently bought and built-in to commercial and industrial equipment the result can be massive consequential damage.
Imitation can be good and bad
There is a saying that ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’ and any company with successful products can expect others to follow with their own versions – you only have to look at the cell-phone or car markets. The ‘followers’ gain the advantage of access to a proven market without the risk and expense of developing their own products from scratch. Sometimes the original manufacturers positively welcome second sources, especially when the original product is innovative and customers are concerned about continuity of supply. If patents are not infringed, multiple sources of correctly identified, compatible parts working to the same specifications are a benefit to consumers, ensuring healthy competition.
A product area where copying is widespread is power converters, particularly board level AC-DCs and DC-DCs. Construction of these parts is often quite labour-intensive using simple discrete components rather than expensive technology so manufacturers in low-cost areas paying minimum wages try to copy and enter the market without necessarily understanding the circuit operation and without proper product qualification and support. Some of these suppliers, particularly from the far east, advertise products that are said to be compatible with the market leaders and are lower cost but in reality, fail to meet the expected quality and performance specifications. Often it is quite subtle; efficiencies might be similar but quoted as ‘typical’ rather than minimum. Headline maximum operating temperature might be the same but the ‘small print’ shows that power output derates dramatically. Cheaper internal components of lower quality are invariably used with impact on reliability and lifetime.
Often, the agency certification of these ‘grey’ products is very suspect. UL marks, (Underwriters Laboratories) particularly are often seen, but it is hard to see how these manufacturers can be so low cost but also invest in the lengthy and expensive product approvals process with the ongoing certification and factory inspection costs. Agency safety certification requires very specific construction techniques, materials and testing so a product with a false UL logo is very unlikely to meet these specifications and be safe to use. Other marks such as CSA TüV and CE are also falsified.
Even if the agency marking is genuine, there have been cases of manufacturers of power products removing certified internal components and replacing them with cheaper parts in production. Sometimes EMC filters are even omitted to save costs even though they were needed to achieve certification.
Misleading CE marking
In China, the authorities have established a standard ‘China Export logo’. A good thing you might think? The problem is that it is almost identical to the Conformité Européene ‘CE’ mark which signifies that products have been tested to all the applicable European Directives, including safety and Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) (Figure 3). The ‘official’ China export logo is an invitation to local suppliers to try to deceive customers that the tests have been done. A clue to a false mark is often that the product does not even qualify for CE marking; DC-DC converters and many AC-DC converters as ‘system components’ should not be marked anyway. In the example in Figure 3 the words ‘China Export’ over the CE mark clearly imply that CE is something extra, otherwise the mark would be redundant!
Figure 3: The valid CE mark (above) shows a larger gap between the two letters and the middle line of the ‘e’ is shorter. Both ‘China Export’ marks below are hardly distinguishable from the correct CE mark.
Counterfeits products
Another category of imitation is where the manufacturer illegally marks their product with a competitor’s name and sells through brokers or on web sites such as Ebay or Alibaba. Now, there is hardly any guarantee that the customer will receive anything other than an empty box, when they order a DC-DC converter, for example. Even if the supplied part basically functions, you can’t expect a criminal manufacturer to maintain any quality, meet specifications or guarantee the safety of the part.
A common ‘short cut’ taken to make a cheaper and smaller part is to omit the safety creepage and clearance required for more than functional isolation in a power converter. This can be difficult for a customer to detect as a high voltage test may show no breakdown. However, parts with high levels of safety isolation (basic, reinforced etc.) can withstand dangerous voltages indefinitely whereas the lower grade parts will surely break down after some short time. You might think that DC-DC converters only process low input and output voltages but, in some applications, they effectively form part of an overall isolation system protecting against electric shock, so failure of the DC-DC insulation can literally be fatal. A common example is in medical applications where mains powered patient-connected equipment requires high grade isolation of signals and power in the patient-connect line even if voltages are low. This covers the eventuality of the patient becoming electrically ‘live’ through other faulty equipment with dangerous currents passing through the patient-connect line to ground (Figure 4).
Figure 4: It is often vital for DC-DCs to have safety isolation
A practical difference between DC-DCs with high grade isolation and others is the transformer winding technique: for agency ratings better than ‘functional’, the windings must be separated by a guaranteed physical barrier or distance. With no safety rating, the primary and secondary windings are typically wound together, wire on wire, with only the enamel as insulation, which agencies disregard for safety. This is why counterfeit parts are sometimes not only cheaper but smaller, without the required internal separation distances. Fortunately, the lack of separation does mean that illegal parts can sometimes be identified in test – they have much higher coupling capacitance between input and output. A high isolation part may have just 2 or 3pF whereas a low-grade part will be more like 50pF.
Case examples Just 40km from Hallstatt, the town of Gmunden is the headquarters RECOM, a major supplier of AC-DC and DC-DC converters who have seen their share of copy and counterfeit products. Their R-78 series has been widely copied with ‘equivalents’ which are basically the same in form fit and function but differ in technical detail and quality. While these parts are branded differently, other parts have been copied down to the detail of the RECOM logo and approvals markings. Clearly these are illegal and pose risks to RECOM’s customers and reputation.
An example is a customer who qualified the RECOM REC5-243.3SRW part into their application for a machine controller. The end product became successful but when lead times for DC-DCs extended in the last economic cycle, the customer thought they found stock of the RECOM part in Asia and at a good price. Alarm bells should have rung but the parts were bought and seemed to work. However, after about 500 customer products were shipped, failures of the DC-DC started, customers complained and service personnel had to go to end-customers’ sites round the world to replace controller boards. Claims for compensation for lost production and loss of reputation began to be discussed. Even before the failed parts were received, RECOM checked their manufacturing process and performed Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) on production samples of the product with no problems found. When the failed parts were received, it was immediately obvious that they were not made by RECOM. The marking was quite different in font and positioning. X-ray inspection of the parts (Figure 5) showed totally different transformer construction using a cheap bobbin core compared with a well isolated and screened E-Core. This construction provides no safety barrier compared with the correct parts holding UL and EN certification. It’s fortunate that only machines failed and personnel were not injured. The unfortunate incident cost RECOM’s customer tens of thousands of euros in production stoppage, repair and replacement costs quite apart from reputational damage.
Figure 5: RECOM original (left) and counterfeit part (right)
Another disturbing example came to light when a RECOM customer saw failing parts in an application where ATEX approval had been obtained for explosive atmosphere environments. The high isolation performance of the RECOM RxxPxx series had been a factor in obtaining safety approval but cheap parts marked RECOM from an unauthorised source had been purchased for production and were counterfeit, again with low grade isolation, posing a serious risk in this safety-sensitive application. RECOM products RV/R, REC6/R and more have also been subject to counterfeiting. Figure 6 shows a selection of genuine RECOM and fake parts discovered.
Figure 6: Comparison of fake and genuine RECOM parts
Remedies While RECOM is working hard to track down the manufacturing ‘pirates’ and take legal action, the company urges its customers to only buy through authorised distributors whose stock can be guaranteed to be genuine. If customers have doubts about the authenticity of parts they hold in stock, RECOM offers a free testing service by contacting them directly at info@recom-power.com. Everybody want low costs and it can be tempting to search the internet for bargains. The costs saved however can be massively outweighed by consequential damages if counterfeit parts are used – including substantial claims for personal and corporate reputational injury. There is another saying – ‘if it looks too good to be true – it probably isn’t’. Don’t be deceived by impossibly low-cost parts.
RECOM: We Power your Products
Hallstatt Austria, credit Nick Csakany
Its many thousands of tourist visitors must have included some Chinese because they took back not just memories but also plans to recreate the village is minute detail in Guangdong province as an up-market residential complex. The $940 million ‘Chinese copy’ of the village is hardly meant to deceive and residents of the Austrian version actually attended its opening ceremony, flattered that their home village was so admired.
‘Hallstatt’ Guangdong, credit Hanno Böck
Some far eastern copies have a much darker side though; we’re all familiar with stories of designer watches and clothing being ‘ripped off’ and even well-known makes of western cell-phones being copied shamelessly, but electronic component parts are being targeted as well. When these ‘fake’ parts are innocently bought and built-in to commercial and industrial equipment the result can be massive consequential damage.
Imitation can be good and bad
There is a saying that ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’ and any company with successful products can expect others to follow with their own versions – you only have to look at the cell-phone or car markets. The ‘followers’ gain the advantage of access to a proven market without the risk and expense of developing their own products from scratch. Sometimes the original manufacturers positively welcome second sources, especially when the original product is innovative and customers are concerned about continuity of supply. If patents are not infringed, multiple sources of correctly identified, compatible parts working to the same specifications are a benefit to consumers, ensuring healthy competition.
A product area where copying is widespread is power converters, particularly board level AC-DCs and DC-DCs. Construction of these parts is often quite labour-intensive using simple discrete components rather than expensive technology so manufacturers in low-cost areas paying minimum wages try to copy and enter the market without necessarily understanding the circuit operation and without proper product qualification and support. Some of these suppliers, particularly from the far east, advertise products that are said to be compatible with the market leaders and are lower cost but in reality, fail to meet the expected quality and performance specifications. Often it is quite subtle; efficiencies might be similar but quoted as ‘typical’ rather than minimum. Headline maximum operating temperature might be the same but the ‘small print’ shows that power output derates dramatically. Cheaper internal components of lower quality are invariably used with impact on reliability and lifetime.
Often, the agency certification of these ‘grey’ products is very suspect. UL marks, (Underwriters Laboratories) particularly are often seen, but it is hard to see how these manufacturers can be so low cost but also invest in the lengthy and expensive product approvals process with the ongoing certification and factory inspection costs. Agency safety certification requires very specific construction techniques, materials and testing so a product with a false UL logo is very unlikely to meet these specifications and be safe to use. Other marks such as CSA TüV and CE are also falsified.
Even if the agency marking is genuine, there have been cases of manufacturers of power products removing certified internal components and replacing them with cheaper parts in production. Sometimes EMC filters are even omitted to save costs even though they were needed to achieve certification.
Misleading CE marking
In China, the authorities have established a standard ‘China Export logo’. A good thing you might think? The problem is that it is almost identical to the Conformité Européene ‘CE’ mark which signifies that products have been tested to all the applicable European Directives, including safety and Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) (Figure 3). The ‘official’ China export logo is an invitation to local suppliers to try to deceive customers that the tests have been done. A clue to a false mark is often that the product does not even qualify for CE marking; DC-DC converters and many AC-DC converters as ‘system components’ should not be marked anyway. In the example in Figure 3 the words ‘China Export’ over the CE mark clearly imply that CE is something extra, otherwise the mark would be redundant!
Figure 3: The valid CE mark (above) shows a larger gap between the two letters and the middle line of the ‘e’ is shorter. Both ‘China Export’ marks below are hardly distinguishable from the correct CE mark.
Counterfeits products
Another category of imitation is where the manufacturer illegally marks their product with a competitor’s name and sells through brokers or on web sites such as Ebay or Alibaba. Now, there is hardly any guarantee that the customer will receive anything other than an empty box, when they order a DC-DC converter, for example. Even if the supplied part basically functions, you can’t expect a criminal manufacturer to maintain any quality, meet specifications or guarantee the safety of the part.
A common ‘short cut’ taken to make a cheaper and smaller part is to omit the safety creepage and clearance required for more than functional isolation in a power converter. This can be difficult for a customer to detect as a high voltage test may show no breakdown. However, parts with high levels of safety isolation (basic, reinforced etc.) can withstand dangerous voltages indefinitely whereas the lower grade parts will surely break down after some short time. You might think that DC-DC converters only process low input and output voltages but, in some applications, they effectively form part of an overall isolation system protecting against electric shock, so failure of the DC-DC insulation can literally be fatal. A common example is in medical applications where mains powered patient-connected equipment requires high grade isolation of signals and power in the patient-connect line even if voltages are low. This covers the eventuality of the patient becoming electrically ‘live’ through other faulty equipment with dangerous currents passing through the patient-connect line to ground (Figure 4).
Figure 4: It is often vital for DC-DCs to have safety isolation
A practical difference between DC-DCs with high grade isolation and others is the transformer winding technique: for agency ratings better than ‘functional’, the windings must be separated by a guaranteed physical barrier or distance. With no safety rating, the primary and secondary windings are typically wound together, wire on wire, with only the enamel as insulation, which agencies disregard for safety. This is why counterfeit parts are sometimes not only cheaper but smaller, without the required internal separation distances. Fortunately, the lack of separation does mean that illegal parts can sometimes be identified in test – they have much higher coupling capacitance between input and output. A high isolation part may have just 2 or 3pF whereas a low-grade part will be more like 50pF.
Case examples Just 40km from Hallstatt, the town of Gmunden is the headquarters RECOM, a major supplier of AC-DC and DC-DC converters who have seen their share of copy and counterfeit products. Their R-78 series has been widely copied with ‘equivalents’ which are basically the same in form fit and function but differ in technical detail and quality. While these parts are branded differently, other parts have been copied down to the detail of the RECOM logo and approvals markings. Clearly these are illegal and pose risks to RECOM’s customers and reputation.
An example is a customer who qualified the RECOM REC5-243.3SRW part into their application for a machine controller. The end product became successful but when lead times for DC-DCs extended in the last economic cycle, the customer thought they found stock of the RECOM part in Asia and at a good price. Alarm bells should have rung but the parts were bought and seemed to work. However, after about 500 customer products were shipped, failures of the DC-DC started, customers complained and service personnel had to go to end-customers’ sites round the world to replace controller boards. Claims for compensation for lost production and loss of reputation began to be discussed. Even before the failed parts were received, RECOM checked their manufacturing process and performed Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) on production samples of the product with no problems found. When the failed parts were received, it was immediately obvious that they were not made by RECOM. The marking was quite different in font and positioning. X-ray inspection of the parts (Figure 5) showed totally different transformer construction using a cheap bobbin core compared with a well isolated and screened E-Core. This construction provides no safety barrier compared with the correct parts holding UL and EN certification. It’s fortunate that only machines failed and personnel were not injured. The unfortunate incident cost RECOM’s customer tens of thousands of euros in production stoppage, repair and replacement costs quite apart from reputational damage.
Figure 5: RECOM original (left) and counterfeit part (right)
Another disturbing example came to light when a RECOM customer saw failing parts in an application where ATEX approval had been obtained for explosive atmosphere environments. The high isolation performance of the RECOM RxxPxx series had been a factor in obtaining safety approval but cheap parts marked RECOM from an unauthorised source had been purchased for production and were counterfeit, again with low grade isolation, posing a serious risk in this safety-sensitive application. RECOM products RV/R, REC6/R and more have also been subject to counterfeiting. Figure 6 shows a selection of genuine RECOM and fake parts discovered.
Figure 6: Comparison of fake and genuine RECOM parts
Remedies While RECOM is working hard to track down the manufacturing ‘pirates’ and take legal action, the company urges its customers to only buy through authorised distributors whose stock can be guaranteed to be genuine. If customers have doubts about the authenticity of parts they hold in stock, RECOM offers a free testing service by contacting them directly at info@recom-power.com. Everybody want low costs and it can be tempting to search the internet for bargains. The costs saved however can be massively outweighed by consequential damages if counterfeit parts are used – including substantial claims for personal and corporate reputational injury. There is another saying – ‘if it looks too good to be true – it probably isn’t’. Don’t be deceived by impossibly low-cost parts.
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