Chinese engineering.
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sonicmook56
Well-known member
no way.
signalflow
Well-known member
WTF!!!! :shock:
Larrchild
Well-known member
I've been Nichi-Conned!
Ptownkid
Well-known member
That's obviously out of context, they'd at lest use the right value...
Steve Jones
Well-known member
[quote author="Ptownkid"]That's obviously out of context, they'd at lest use the right value...[/quote]
Yes, you would think that they would use the correct uF value to pass it off, with a cheap low voltage part inside.
Yes, you would think that they would use the correct uF value to pass it off, with a cheap low voltage part inside.
bcarso
Well-known member
Someday I will tell you all my first Chinese capacitor disaster story.
My worst capacitor story came from a US company (while I don't know or care where their factory was located). A swaging tool that connected the foil to the lead broke, and it was making weak bonds.
I found out about the problem when a random QA inspection turned up parts that were open circuit. A little amusing, the worker testing with a capacitance meter was still getting a tiny residual reading off the 2200uF cap, so called engineering to ask if X pF or X nF was out of tolerance? :roll: But I'm really glad they called when they did because we were able to jump on the problem quickly, since it didn't show up in production testing. I recalled one container of product heading for the docks and reworked a bunch of FG once we identified the bad batch date codes. This quick catch averted a major field reliability problem since these capacitors were used in many SKUs.
I don't recall the cap company name but they were one of those guys always bragging about their quality awards. I will concede they were very responsive to tracking down the problem at their end and doing what they could to make us whole... much better than the vendors who deny first and try to blame the customer.
Those of us old enough recall shoddy quality from Japan, and I suspect the Brits encountered some shoddy quality when they bought cheap goods from their former colony (us).
JR
EDIT- I had another capacitor company where the owner of the company came in to resolve some problem.. IIRC it was a leaky puck issue. I took a few of "his" parts apart in front of him and showed him the problem. He actually made me a job offer to go work for him... now that was scary. Dealing with component problems is not the fun part of engineering..
I found out about the problem when a random QA inspection turned up parts that were open circuit. A little amusing, the worker testing with a capacitance meter was still getting a tiny residual reading off the 2200uF cap, so called engineering to ask if X pF or X nF was out of tolerance? :roll: But I'm really glad they called when they did because we were able to jump on the problem quickly, since it didn't show up in production testing. I recalled one container of product heading for the docks and reworked a bunch of FG once we identified the bad batch date codes. This quick catch averted a major field reliability problem since these capacitors were used in many SKUs.
I don't recall the cap company name but they were one of those guys always bragging about their quality awards. I will concede they were very responsive to tracking down the problem at their end and doing what they could to make us whole... much better than the vendors who deny first and try to blame the customer.
Those of us old enough recall shoddy quality from Japan, and I suspect the Brits encountered some shoddy quality when they bought cheap goods from their former colony (us).
JR
EDIT- I had another capacitor company where the owner of the company came in to resolve some problem.. IIRC it was a leaky puck issue. I took a few of "his" parts apart in front of him and showed him the problem. He actually made me a job offer to go work for him... now that was scary. Dealing with component problems is not the fun part of engineering..
mwkeene
Well-known member
Not suprised. My experience with Chinese manufacturers has not been good. Their vast offerings outweigh their ability to produce them correctly. Throw in a clueless american "representative" and you have a recipie for disaster.
[quote author="mwkeene"]Not suprised. My experience with Chinese manufacturers has not been good. Their vast offerings outweigh their ability to produce them correctly. Throw in a clueless american "representative" and you have a recipie for disaster.[/quote]
I had generally good experience working with Chinese contract manufacturing but that was working in a larger company context, where we had decent process documentation, larger Chinese CM invest in english speaking inside people to facilitate communication, and we can afford regular visits to answer unasked questions. As a small company I am very apprehensive of trying to manage something like that long distance.
I have one cultural observation that I don't want to make a bigger deal out of than it deserves but in Chinese culture there is very little personal empathy for people they don't know personally and have some "obligation" to. A lot of the gift giving in that culture is to build up or bank such obligation in anticipation of some future need. In food or drug manufacturing there may be less concern about the health consequences to customers they don't know. The recent problems with contaminated dairy products is apparently from a widespread practice of supplementing raw milk from underfed cows with some chemicals to game the protein content at testing done during bulk processing. I doubt these workers drink their own milk, so to speak.
In the west I presume there is a little more empathy for unknown consumers than to knowingly contaminate foods or medicines. But I feel uncomfortable suggesting this is a bad as it sounds or endemic.
JR
I had generally good experience working with Chinese contract manufacturing but that was working in a larger company context, where we had decent process documentation, larger Chinese CM invest in english speaking inside people to facilitate communication, and we can afford regular visits to answer unasked questions. As a small company I am very apprehensive of trying to manage something like that long distance.
I have one cultural observation that I don't want to make a bigger deal out of than it deserves but in Chinese culture there is very little personal empathy for people they don't know personally and have some "obligation" to. A lot of the gift giving in that culture is to build up or bank such obligation in anticipation of some future need. In food or drug manufacturing there may be less concern about the health consequences to customers they don't know. The recent problems with contaminated dairy products is apparently from a widespread practice of supplementing raw milk from underfed cows with some chemicals to game the protein content at testing done during bulk processing. I doubt these workers drink their own milk, so to speak.
In the west I presume there is a little more empathy for unknown consumers than to knowingly contaminate foods or medicines. But I feel uncomfortable suggesting this is a bad as it sounds or endemic.
JR
bcarso
Well-known member
[quote author="JohnRoberts"]My worst capacitor story came from a US company (while I don't know or care where their factory was located). A swaging tool that connected the foil to the lead broke, and it was making weak bonds.
I found out about the problem when a random QA inspection turned up parts that were open circuit. A little amusing, the worker testing with a capacitance meter was still getting a tiny residual reading off the 2200uF cap, so called engineering to ask if X pF or X nF was out of tolerance? :roll: But I'm really glad they called when they did because we were able to jump on the problem quickly, since it didn't show up in production testing. I recalled one container of product heading for the docks and reworked a bunch of FG once we identified the bad batch date codes. This quick catch averted a major field reliability problem since these capacitors were used in many SKUs.
I don't recall the cap company name but they were one of those guys always bragging about their quality awards. I will concede they were very responsive to tracking down the problem at their end and doing what they could to make us whole... much better than the vendors who deny first and try to blame the customer.
Those of us old enough recall shoddy quality from Japan, and I suspect the Brits encountered some shoddy quality when they bought cheap goods from their former colony (us).
JR
EDIT- I had another capacitor company where the owner of the company came in to resolve some problem.. IIRC it was a leaky puck issue. I took a few of "his" parts apart in front of him and showed him the problem. He actually made me a job offer to go work for him... now that was scary. Dealing with component problems is not the fun part of engineering..[/quote]
I asked my friend Dennis Berkey, a first-rate QA expert, and a capacitor specialist, who had worked for many companies over the years including Philips, if Harman was the worst company he'd ever known, after some amazing epsiodes when the deservedly now-long-gone VP of QA, who talked the talk but did anything but walk the walk (intimidating, backstabbing, thoroughly duplicitous, would pressure others to lie and falsify data---and those were what his friends thought :razz: ) had asked Dennis to lie about test results.
Dennis said "Oh no---Harman is [was] by no means the worst---they are [were] probably the third-worst.
The second worst was company J, run by an autocratic founder who hired me to put together documentary window dressing, and make it look like they had an actual system in place, but didn't want any of this to really affect day-to-day operations.*
The worst was a company in the San Fernando Valley, whose executives conspired to conceal defects in products that were for life-critical space/military applications. I helped put them in prison!"
:thumb:
*when company J came in and pitched to the Purchasing Agent and I was invited to the meeting, I let them chat for a while and then said Oh by the way---we have a mutual acquaintance, Dennis Berkey.
There was a bit of not-fully-suppressed gulping and perhaps some detectable blushing, and one of them went on to say "Oh, yes, Dennis. You know Dennis do you. Well----let's just say that we were all reading from the same book, but Dennis was just a few pages ahead of us".
I found out about the problem when a random QA inspection turned up parts that were open circuit. A little amusing, the worker testing with a capacitance meter was still getting a tiny residual reading off the 2200uF cap, so called engineering to ask if X pF or X nF was out of tolerance? :roll: But I'm really glad they called when they did because we were able to jump on the problem quickly, since it didn't show up in production testing. I recalled one container of product heading for the docks and reworked a bunch of FG once we identified the bad batch date codes. This quick catch averted a major field reliability problem since these capacitors were used in many SKUs.
I don't recall the cap company name but they were one of those guys always bragging about their quality awards. I will concede they were very responsive to tracking down the problem at their end and doing what they could to make us whole... much better than the vendors who deny first and try to blame the customer.
Those of us old enough recall shoddy quality from Japan, and I suspect the Brits encountered some shoddy quality when they bought cheap goods from their former colony (us).
JR
EDIT- I had another capacitor company where the owner of the company came in to resolve some problem.. IIRC it was a leaky puck issue. I took a few of "his" parts apart in front of him and showed him the problem. He actually made me a job offer to go work for him... now that was scary. Dealing with component problems is not the fun part of engineering..[/quote]
I asked my friend Dennis Berkey, a first-rate QA expert, and a capacitor specialist, who had worked for many companies over the years including Philips, if Harman was the worst company he'd ever known, after some amazing epsiodes when the deservedly now-long-gone VP of QA, who talked the talk but did anything but walk the walk (intimidating, backstabbing, thoroughly duplicitous, would pressure others to lie and falsify data---and those were what his friends thought :razz: ) had asked Dennis to lie about test results.
Dennis said "Oh no---Harman is [was] by no means the worst---they are [were] probably the third-worst.
The second worst was company J, run by an autocratic founder who hired me to put together documentary window dressing, and make it look like they had an actual system in place, but didn't want any of this to really affect day-to-day operations.*
The worst was a company in the San Fernando Valley, whose executives conspired to conceal defects in products that were for life-critical space/military applications. I helped put them in prison!"
:thumb:
*when company J came in and pitched to the Purchasing Agent and I was invited to the meeting, I let them chat for a while and then said Oh by the way---we have a mutual acquaintance, Dennis Berkey.
There was a bit of not-fully-suppressed gulping and perhaps some detectable blushing, and one of them went on to say "Oh, yes, Dennis. You know Dennis do you. Well----let's just say that we were all reading from the same book, but Dennis was just a few pages ahead of us".
That reminds me of a painful meeting in the director of purchasing's office, between me and the importer of some crap korean faders I was having breakage problems with. Just before the meeting, "my" purchasing guy left me to hang in the breeze when he asked me "under whose authority did I break several hundred faders?". The faders sucked so bad, I instructed the factory to test them before even soldering wires to them, because we were having so many fall out at final assembly and final QA.
I said it didn't matter because it was a fair test. I showed the importer how I tested them. He already knew he had a problem part and agreed to replace them all despite my guy not having my back. Technically I should have pre-negotiated a test procedure, but damn there was a little plastic clip inside the fader that would break if you looked at it crosseyed.
I saw a whole new side to "my" purchasing guy that day. arghhh
JR
I said it didn't matter because it was a fair test. I showed the importer how I tested them. He already knew he had a problem part and agreed to replace them all despite my guy not having my back. Technically I should have pre-negotiated a test procedure, but damn there was a little plastic clip inside the fader that would break if you looked at it crosseyed.
I saw a whole new side to "my" purchasing guy that day. arghhh
JR
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