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The team from Force Technologies will be discussing all things obsolescence amongst themselves and with a mix of special guests from the industry.
00:00:16:15 - 00:00:23:13
Ben
Hi there. Welcome to another force Tech Talk. Today we're going to be talking about counterfeits and how counterfeits affect military and aerospace subsystems.
00:00:23:15 - 00:00:49:04
Eder
Hi Ben. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to talk to you. Normally I talk to you currently, Charlotte, but it's going to be nice to learn something from you today. I want to talk about counterfeit. It's something that for years I would associate it with, fake nice goods or nice T-shirts, like a, t shirt with an upside down crocodile or something like that.
00:00:49:04 - 00:00:58:21
Eder
Yeah. So that was the understanding my understanding about counterfeit. But it's a lot more. Can you explain, what is counterfeit? Can you define it on our line of business?
00:00:58:22 - 00:01:40:25
Ben
Yeah. So in the semiconductor industry, counterfeits, effectively a remarked or, black top, it's often you hear, that, sort of, that sort of wording where someone has remarked a, a semiconductor component with another marking, either to sort of change the speed rating of it or the, temperature rating or the actual overall qualification level, and is particularly concerned in the semiconductor market because, a lot of semiconductors are made with the same sort of, woods package, you know, a 28 pin dip from one manufacturer looks pretty much the same as the 28 bandit from another manufacturer.
00:01:40:25 - 00:02:04:22
Ben
And, you know, when you get into the plastic components as well, the packages look almost identical. And you know that, sort of. Yeah. 28 pin cc or or, you know, 32 pin or plastic dip is very much the same across manufacturers, very difficult to sort of tell them apart, especially since they're made to industry standard. You know, the overall sort of dimensions of the package ends up being identical.
00:02:04:22 - 00:02:30:24
Ben
So it's quite easy for a counterfeiter to, you know, sort of remove the existing mark and then put another mark on top of it and then sell it as a either, you know, a different component that maybe a customer needs, or a more expensive version of that component. Unless you've got some sort of advanced detection methods, then you're not going to you're not going to pick that up before it gets onto a board and it starts causing problems on the board.
00:02:30:27 - 00:02:42:22
Eder
So for an untrained eye, oh, set of eyes like mine, that would be really hard. What are the potential segments we should explore when dealing with counterfeit?
00:02:42:25 - 00:03:06:08
Ben
Just what I mean by the the actual sort of testing, the testing that you should be doing to that doing to them. Well, I mean, must be there's some quite strong industry guidelines. The, the, a lot of a lot of companies follow nowadays. It sort of started with the, the, the s a s 90, 100, sorry S606081 and then moved on to AS6171.
00:03:06:10 - 00:03:30:05
Ben
Yeah. And they document quite heavily what those components, you know, what testing needs to go through on those components. So you do things like, there's no visual dimensional checks to the original sort of drawing, you know, making sure that all the thickness of the component and the f and calcium, the width and high and length of components is all accurate.
00:03:30:08 - 00:03:52:13
Ben
That's obviously quite surface layer. You know, you then you go on to sort of doing chemical testing on the top of the component, because one of the the key ways that, counterfeiter will counterfeit a chip is, is black topping, as mentioned earlier. So they'll sort of, layer over a, sort of epoxy layer over the top of the component.
00:03:52:15 - 00:04:13:00
Ben
The, the is quite resistant to sort of standard chemicals that you would use to remove it. And gives the impression that it's, you know, even if you look at it under a sort of a high magnification, it's often quite hard to tell the difference between that top, that top layer and that sort of sort of plastic as well.
00:04:13:03 - 00:04:33:14
Ben
So you have to use some quite strong acids to try and remove the top of the, top that, black top material. You can also heavily X-ray the component standard also called out for that, which allows you to sort of look at the uniformity across a batch. Checking the internal lead frame and the structure and, you know, the dye size, etc..
00:04:33:17 - 00:04:52:25
Ben
Then you also take a small amount of the components, you know, three pieces and d cap them. So that means effectively removing, the lid of the component or the encapsulate material to actually physically look at the dye. And then, you know, most OEM dyes have a logo or some kind of marking, which relates to the part number.
00:04:52:26 - 00:05:14:07
Ben
So that's another authentication method. And the standards obviously call out so A6 white one. A lot of companies never used to do electrical testing. So that's the a lot of customers used to do. IA6081A, which was mainly a physical dimension verification. Paperwork.
00:05:14:07 - 00:05:14:22
Eder
Question. Yeah.
00:05:14:23 - 00:05:42:18
Ben
Check paperwork. You know, do do your X-rays do you do caps make sure there's no sort of outward sign on the component that there's, you know, nothing been tampered with on the component? But then, you know, then some some customers and suppliers would add electrical testing as well. We always defined electrical testing, but the A61, seven one, even at sort of the moderate levels now includes pretty pretty heavy electrical testing as well either DC and or combination between DC and AC.
00:05:42:18 - 00:05:50:21
Ben
So you sort of, you know, you're all round checking the component, to a really high level of certainty that there's no, you know, there's nothing wrong with it.
00:05:50:23 - 00:05:57:19
Eder
And what defines where or how far you want to go with the test is is there any level of risk? How do we get there.
00:05:57:22 - 00:06:24:22
Ben
Yeah. So the the A6 171 specification. Defines risk inherently within it. It's obviously up to the customer to decide for their application what what risk level they should go to. Most of the industry uses the moderate risk level to believe it as which is effectively a 6 to 8 one A with all the additional biologicals on it as well.
00:06:24:25 - 00:06:55:13
Ben
But yeah, it's really it's, it's they have the A6 171 standard starts with a, you know, a low risk moderate risk. And then high risk, and moves right the way through. So you can really scale up the, the amount of testing that you do and on the, on the highest risk. And you're doing, infant mortality testing through burning and, and, and lots of other, destructive testing on the baster to make sure that it's going to be good for, you know, a critical application like a, you know, aerospace application or something similar.
00:06:55:15 - 00:06:56:25
Ben
Yeah.
00:06:56:28 - 00:07:26:11
Eder
I believe if we have the, the misfortune of getting counterfeit, getting in the system and the supply chain, the risks could be really bad for, for, for for the systems we work with. If it goes through an airplane, it could be dangerous for, for, for for the airplane. So, I think, for any actuary side, these chain by the ethical behaviors is important.
00:07:26:13 - 00:07:27:25
Eder
Yeah. I think you consider.
00:07:28:01 - 00:07:58:29
Ben
Yeah, very much so. Yeah, I mean, it it that's why we have a suppliers. That's why we go through such rigorous checking for pre suppliers. I've been a force now 20 years, and I can't remember the last time that we had a, what I would call a, actual counterfeit device, you know, you sometime byproduct in and it's, you know, the leads are heavily oxidized or, maybe a dimensions ever so slightly out.
00:07:59:02 - 00:08:18:25
Ben
And those kind of things often are a result of, you know, not not a counterfeit, just a poor manufacturer's documentation or things like that. So it gets flagged as, something along those lines, but then it's, you know, so it's then you have to ultimately look at what is that, a is that something that's a true indication.
00:08:18:27 - 00:08:39:27
Ben
The most true indication you have a sea of counterfeit component is generally that you you see sanding marks or somewhere where they've literally gone in and sanded the top of the component off, removed material, placed a new material on it, and marked over, the. Yeah, most mostly that's that's very rare. But there has been a huge uptick in and counterfeit components, reported by the industry.
00:08:39:27 - 00:08:51:28
Eder
So yeah, I heard a lot, I think I think she figures around 25% of, what gets into the market at the moment. Yeah, we continue.
00:08:51:28 - 00:09:02:08
Ben
That 25% between. Yeah, 24 and 20 2025 when comparing back to 2015. So it's a substantial uptick in counterfeit components that are being reported.
00:09:02:12 - 00:09:13:02
Eder
So it's really important to invest on prevention before it gets a bigger problem. And we have it's inside the system inside the supply chain.
00:09:13:06 - 00:09:21:25
Ben
Yeah I think I again I think most of the industries now work quite well to those those standards. And they've been adopted partly by the aerospace and defense market certainly.
00:09:21:27 - 00:09:25:20
Eder
Definitely is not a wasted money actually is a good invasion.
00:09:25:20 - 00:09:40:00
Ben
No. A lot of a lot of, you know, a lot of sort of distributors when they're working in quite tight margins, you know, like 12, $1,200 for an authentication test or something like that can can seem expensive, but it's. Well, yeah, it's well worth it.
00:09:40:03 - 00:09:48:05
Eder
Yeah. I think it's the time we have it finished. Thank you very much for explaining a little more about counterfeit. Yeah. Just knowledge.