Counterfeit Electronic Components: What Actually Catches Them

Every open-market purchase carries counterfeit risk, and every supplier will tell you theirs does not. The difference between a supplier who is right about that and one who is guessing is not the confidence in the email — it is whether anyone looked at the parts, and what they looked at them with.

Why the paperwork does not settle it

A certificate of conformance is a document produced by the party selling you the goods. So is a datasheet copy, a photo of a reel, and a claim of factory packaging. None of these are independent of the seller, and all of them are trivially produced.

This is not a reason to skip documentation — traceability to a named prior owner is genuinely informative, and a supplier who cannot name where a lot came from has told you something important. It is a reason not to stop there.

The useful question is not “is there paperwork” but “what happens to this lot between the seller’s shelf and my line”.

The two standards worth knowing

AS6081 is the purchasing-side standard. It defines the inspection sequence a distributor should run on open-market material: documentation review, external visual inspection, remarking and resurfacing checks, and the decision points for escalating to further test. It is about process — what gets done, in what order, and what disqualifies a lot.

AS6171 is the test-method standard. It defines the actual techniques and how to select among them by risk: X-ray, XRF, decapsulation, electrical test, acoustic microscopy, and others. It is about evidence — what each method can and cannot prove.

A supplier saying “we test to AS6081” is describing their process. One saying “this lot was tested to AS6171 method X” is describing what was done to your parts. The second is the more useful sentence.

What each check actually catches

External visual inspection. The cheapest step and still the highest-yield one. Package dimensions against the manufacturer’s own drawing, lead condition and coplanarity, mould texture, pin-one indicator geometry. Most crude counterfeits die here.

Marking permanency. A solvent test on the part marking. Original laser marking survives; applied ink over a resurfaced package frequently does not. Fast, cheap, and it catches the most common remarking attack.

Resurfacing detection. Under magnification, a sanded and recoated package shows texture and edge-radius inconsistencies against a known-good sample.

Date-code plausibility. A date code that postdates the part’s own end of life, or a lot with impossibly uniform codes across supposedly separate reels, is a straightforward contradiction.

X-ray. Internal die and lead-frame geometry compared against a known-good. Catches empty packages, wrong die, and re-ball work on BGAs.

Decapsulation. Destructive on the sampled units. Exposes the die and its markings directly — the most conclusive identity check available, and the reason it is reserved for lots where the risk justifies destroying parts.

Electrical test. Confirms the part does what the datasheet says at the relevant corners. Note the direction of proof: passing electrical test does not establish authenticity. A recovered, out-of-spec-history genuine part can pass it, and so can a functional but under-grade substitute.

Choosing a test level

The honest position is that testing costs money and not every line needs all of it. The variables that should drive the decision:

• Whether the part has full manufacturer traceability. A part that came through the authorized channel is a different risk class from one that did not.
• Where the board ends up. A ten-year industrial product, a medical device and a consumer accessory do not warrant the same spend.
• What a failure costs. Not the part price — the field return, the recall, the line-down day.
• How targeted the part is. High-demand parts with no authorized supply are where counterfeiters concentrate. An obsolete, allocated, high-value part is a different risk from a jellybean passive.

A supplier who applies the same test level to everything is either overcharging on the easy lots or under-testing the hard ones.

Structure the purchase so the risk transfers

The most effective counterfeit control is commercial, not technical.

If you buy through an agent who introduces you to a supplier, you own the risk — the agent’s exposure ends at the introduction. If you buy from a company that takes title, resells as principal, and is the Vendor of Record on the invoice, the risk is theirs. When something is wrong, that distinction decides whether you are filing a claim or starting an argument.

Worth confirming before the PO:

• Who is the seller of record on the invoice?
• What inspection runs before the parts ship, and do I get the report?
• Is there product liability insurance behind the sale, and for how much?
• When do I pay — before shipment, or after delivery and inspection?

How Makat handles it

Parts lacking full manufacturer traceability are always tested before they ship by accredited partner labs, to AS6081 and AS6171 as the risk warrants, with inspection between the supplier and you rather than after the parts reach your line.

We are ISO 9001:2015 certified and an ERAI member, we screen against supplier blacklists and ERAI fraud data before a supplier is used, and we carry $10M in product liability insurance. We buy and resell as principal, so Makat is the Vendor of Record — one PO, one invoice, one company accountable.

Payment terms follow the same logic: you pay after delivery and final inspection, because a supplier confident in the parts should be willing to be paid after you have seen them.