11 ms·
A sure telltale is laser writing. You can tell on their second example - the writing is sharp and perfect. Often the logo is not quite solid color, and you can
by Luc 3y ago
A sure telltale is laser writing. You can tell on their second example - the writing is sharp and perfect. Often the logo is not quite solid color, and you can see it has lines from the laser in it. The color of laser-'printed' text is also typical.
The originals often have pretty bad markings on them, actually. Off-center, not aligned, not evenly printed. Too perfect is suspicious.
Also look at the pins. Sometimes they dip the feet into solder to make them look unscratched and shiny. I have avoided buying 'New Old Stock' ICs because I could tell the pins had solder on them.
A couple of times I found the IC was of the type advertised (after I removed the paint). I guess they just added a fresh coat of paint to make them look new!
- LinuxJedi 3y agoI never thought about inspecting the pins before, a very good point.
- karmakaze 3y agoWhen it mentioned that there was something off about the printing/logo, I zoomed in and recognized it immediately. As I recall the Rockwell International logo has curves joining the angled borders, like you'd expect to see for laminar flow. The pictured one has straight lines that meet at a corner. You can see the difference in logo between the 11450 and '11473' chips.
- userbinator 3y agoLaser etching doesn't come off with acetone (and is usually much harder to read, being more like embossing than printing). That's silkscreened ink.
- Luc 3y agoI'm talking about the 'Another Chip' IC, which has laser writing. It's the bottom one in the header image. They use a coat of paint to obscure previous markings, then use the laser on that, resulting in brownish text (not embossed).