Identify faked WIMA capacitors

[Majestic12]

Is there anything I can do to identify fake WIMA capacitors? I bought a bunch of WIMAs from ebay and they all look somehow different from the WIMAs I had in stock.

The plastic and resin has a different shade of red. And they all had a different direction on the paper strip where they were glued to.

I'm not sure butI feel like those aren't real ones....

Does anybody also have experiance with counterfeit components?

 

[Sylvain D.]

Hi M12,

I have no experience with counterfeit components but you might try contacting 
TAW electronics and ask them what they think.

http://www.tawelectronics.com/

Sylvain

 

[[silent:arts]]

... but you might try contacting 
TAW electronics and ask them what they think.

Sylvain, since his location is in germany www.wima.de would be the better idea

any picture?

 

[ncoak]

counterfeiting low cost electrical components sounds like a pretty fruitless endeavor....but i'd be interested to know if it's going on.

 

[Kingston]

Are you sure they aren't just old Wima caps? They have been in the business for many decades already, and their manufacturing methods and tooling have probably changed plenty of times. I have seen some pretty strange looking Wima caps at surplus stores, but they were just very old, not fake.

I can't imagine any reason even the Chinese would fake film caps.

 

[gemini86]

The Chinese have been known to fake sprague atom caps. They put a smaller, lower voltage rating cap inside the larger can. Wouldn't put it past them to put a 35v part into a 100v housing, knowing that 80% of users don't need that high a voltage rating.

 

[Majestic12]

http://i53.tinypic.com/2h34k7q.jpg

http://i53.tinypic.com/2i8kmpw.jpg



Here are some pictures. Unfortunately you can't see the small differences in the colour. All my WIMAs I had in stock are less "red" and the resin is also less glossy.

I can't really imagine that those caps get faked by someone, but half a year ago I opened a chinese HIFI amp and saw red caps that pretended to be WIMAs. It was easy to tell that they were not real ones, but it made me think....

I bought my caps really cheap from ebay and you know... if its too cheap to be real, it can't be real....

 

[[silent:arts]]

old, but original

 

[Majestic12]

Good to hear

 

[ricardo]

The Chinese have been known to fake sprague atom caps. They put a smaller, lower voltage rating cap inside the larger can. Wouldn't put it past them to put a 35v part into a 100v housing, knowing that 80% of users don't need that high a voltage rating.

You got more details on this?  Links?

but half a year ago I opened a chinese HIFI amp and saw red caps that pretended to be WIMAs. It was easy to tell that they were not real ones, but it made me think....

How did you tell they were not WIMAs?  Did they have WIMA on the cases?  What brand Chinese amp?

 

[Majestic12]

Can't remember which brand it was. The capacitors in this unit had the same colour and the same size as WIMAs but "WIMA" wasn't printed on them. They only tried to look like WIMAs....

 

[gemini86]

The Chinese have been known to fake sprague atom caps. They put a smaller, lower voltage rating cap inside the larger can. Wouldn't put it past them to put a 35v part into a 100v housing, knowing that 80% of users don't need that high a voltage rating.

You got more details on this?  Links?

Can't find the old thread (on a guitar forum somewhere on the interwebs..) but found a pic.

http://www.tjadamowicz.com/amps/gallery/SpragueAtom.jpg

This is all of course things I have heard from other amp builders... I've never used atoms in my builds.

 

[jackies]

They only tried to look like WIMAs....

So like, they were like little plastic boxes with leads but with no "wima" printed on them?
That could be any capacitors, doesn't mean that they are fake or anything.
After all, wima is not a boutique manufacturer or anything, who would fake them anyway?

 

[Majestic12]

No, there wasn't "WIMA" printed on them. As I said, the capacitors weren't fake ones but had the optical style of WIMAs.

 

[kato]

I guess --> Fake.

My first faked Wima's were from Futurlec about 6 years ago. I took side-by-side pictures of them next to Mouser-sourced ones of the same value. Different length leads, different lettering. Sent the picture to wima.de. They confirmed counterfeit.

Yours look much more real than the ones I got. I conclude the profiteers have simply upped their game. The caps from Futurlec went from being red with no markings, then to red with the word "wima" on top. Your fakes look almost exactly like the real thing.

I've seen faked power transistors, fake ICs, and even fake japanese small signal transistors, the discontinued hitachi's and toshibas, as far back as 10 years ago, even from reputable dealers like MCM.    The chinese are even faking 20¢ transistors, really?  You'd think it'd be easier to manufacture an equivalent, than to sand and relabel similar parts. I guess there's money in selling 6¢ transistors for a buck. I'm now suspicious of everything on ebay.

Yes, even those Rubycon caps you bought on ebay. 

See, another creative capacitor upgrade...

 

[gemini86]

Which is why I refuse to believe that the lm394 and mat02s on there are real.

 

[[silent:arts]]

http://www.wima.de/EN/marking.htm

 

[Majestic12]

I send a photo of my caps to WIMA, let's see what they say.....

 

[Majestic12]

Got response from the WIMA customer service. They are quite sure that my caps are out of a production run back in 1992 and no fakes.

 

[kato]

Woo! Good news!