This is the first time that I've physically held a device that's fake. It's hard to tell which is which. Thankfully one of my guys did use a sharpie pen and put a cross on the fake one. Would you have guessed this one is a fake?

It looks pretty new doesn't it? What's happened here is that a drive unit was bought from an automation house as 'refurbished' stock. It did run, for a couple of weeks, then failed. It was sent to us to figure out what was wrong. One of my engineers found the Semikron bridge rectifier to be at fault. The one on the right.

He bought this to me with a feeling that something wasn't quite right with it. He noticed that the bus-bars connected to it in the drive were bent slightly. That's because the fake unit is physically different to a genuine one, the bus-bars were strained.

The good people at Semikron identified this device as being a fake with the differences in physical size along with incorrect batch manufacturing codes.

Fake devices are a real cause for concern. Unfortunately, there is a market for them. When faced with hard-to-source, obsolete or long-leadtime components. Grey-market suppliers can often seem a godsend choice. Counterfeiters know that industrial buyers are often desperate to get machinery back up and running when faced with urgent breakdown situations. They are more likely to use an unknown supplier. Emotional buying often outweighs intelligent sourcing.

How many times have you heard "Thank God for that, I've found one on eBay!".

Before panic sets in, not everything out there is fake. However, the old adage - if something looks too good to be true, it often is.

Intelligent sourcing and buying from authorised sources can help to reduce fake components impacting your production. We're not immune to this either, when it comes to obsolete or hard-to-find components, we are often in the hands of grey-market suppliers. Thankfully, my guys know what to look for.