Can I trust 0.29$ Potentiometer from AliExpress?

Hi guys,

I'm curious if anyone ordered in the past cheap potentiometers from AliExpress?

At 0.29$ a piece, I wonder if it's reliable and will last as long as other brand potentiometers.

Thanks

Do you feel lucky? Price does not correlate 100% with quality, but very good parts are rarely accidentally cheap, especially in small quantity (even as a small company I bought thousands at a time). You might want to sacrifice one to see what the innards look like... how many fingers on the wiper,  fit, feel, and appearance of screened resist, etc?

I have dealt with pots too cheap to work, when purchasing pukes were angling for a cost savings reward. I saw samples that looked fine, but in my "trust but verify" approach, I authorized a 1,000 pc production test. Not a lot of mixers with PCBs that use several pots per PCB. The production parts sucked and the factory had to unsolder them from the boards.  :'(

The factory peeps were angry with me, so invited the puchasing guy to a meeting with the factory supervisors so they could share their displeasure with him. 

JR

Hi

The pot you show seems to have been already used ?
I see remaining solder at few legs...

Best
Zam

Trust them to do what exactly? Wouldn't use them for anything related to life support

Give them a try in something non critical, buy a few and not a million.
Having said that, I really like Alpha 9mm pots as well as Bourns and ALPS, and really these are not that much more expensive in the limited amounts that we use them so why bother?

I did buy hundreds of M3 standoffs in various lengths form banggood.com (a similar Chinese shop), they work really well.

Jarno said:

Having said that, I really like Alpha 9mm pots as well as Bourns and ALPS, and really these are not that much more expensive in the limited amounts that we use them so why bother?

Click to expand...

I need a few value in Reverse log pot and in a small size. I usually use Bourns and Alpha, but regular parts supplier (Mouser, Digikey, Newark, etc.) don't have any in stock... So I would have to oder 350-400 pieces!  I'll order a few from AliExpress to see how they turns out... but I guess I'll have to continue searching the web for other suppliers.
Cheers

You could try Small Bear, they have quite a nice selection, and have a rep for better parts

http://smallbear-electronics.mybigcommerce.com/potentiometers-and-trimpots/

Peter

peterc said:

You could try Small Bear, they have quite a nice selection, and have a rep for better parts

http://smallbear-electronics.mybigcommerce.com/potentiometers-and-trimpots/

Peter

Click to expand...

+1 - I buy parts from them often and have had zero problems.

peterc said:

You could try Small Bear, they have quite a nice selection, and have a rep for better parts

http://smallbear-electronics.mybigcommerce.com/potentiometers-and-trimpots/

Peter

Click to expand...

Smallbear's 9mm Alpha pots and external trimmers are noticably nicer than the knockoffs you get from some places like Tayda or just Ebay. The rotation feels better than Alpha's 16mm pots.

The ones from Aliexpress look like Bourns's 9mm pots. You can get them from Mouser -- they're about $2 each -- but Smallbear has a much larger number of values.

That said, if you got them, they measure what they should measure, and they aren't going in critical locations that are leaving your house that would make repairs a PITA, I'd say you got a deal.

All Potentiometers will fail at some point.

Maybe in 2 years, maybe in 10 years.

having to open a unit to replace them can be a pain sometimes, specially when they fail in the middle of a sessions.

With 0.29$ cheap Chinese pots maybe they will work for 2 months.

I would prefer to  spend more cents in getting a brand potentiometer even if cheap, like Alpha, than to build something with the cheapest Pot available in the market

Just my 2 cents

I have ordered some Chinese (reverse log) pots from China, and from what I see they are not bad.
No idea how long they will keep working without any problems...
The only thing I noticed was that the tolerance is rather high.
I needed dual 100 K reverse log pots, and the values I measure are between 86K and 112 K, so a little over 10%.

RuudNL said:

I have ordered some Chinese (reverse log) pots from China, and from what I see they are not bad.
No idea how long they will keep working without any problems...
The only thing I noticed was that the tolerance is rather high.
I needed dual 100 K reverse log pots, and the values I measure are between 86K and 112 K, so a little over 10%.

Click to expand...

The bulk resistance of pots is generally 20%. The process variability has to do with variation in the conductive media (ink) mix initial resistance that is screened onto the substrate, and then curing time, where they cook it to fix it on the substrate and reach the final resistance.

JR