[ARC5] [Milsurplus] Duracell Coppertop batteries

[Tom Lee]

The quality control task is now left to the end consumer. We ordered a 
bunch of cheap Chinese-made LCD oscilloscope kits ($20 each). Students 
complained about weird glitches on displayed waveforms. It took a little 
sleuthing to discover that the quad op-amp, which was marked TL084, was 
actually the far inferior LM324. You could just barely make out the 
original marking if you looked at it just right.

The price difference between these two op-amps is a few pennies. I was 
in awe that it was worth the trouble to them to erase the original 
markings and re-label with the counterfeit part numbers, all for 
pennies. You gotta sell a boatload of these to make a buck, but 
evidently that's the threshold there.

Yikes.

--Tom

-- 
Prof. Thomas H. Lee
Allen Ctr., Rm. 205
420 Via Palou Mall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4070
http://www-smirc.stanford.edu

On 1/7/2023 18:05, Hubert Miller wrote:
>
> I really wonder about “quality control” in China. I hope there’s more 
> real attention paid to their moon mission.
>
> I recall when I was working and we ordered a resupply of pencils made 
> you know where. The erasers, or what
>
> looked like erasers, were solid hard plastic. No one upstream noticed 
> this little facet of the device? It seems to
>
> me that in China, when the money is handed over, the deal is done and 
> history. After reading about poison
>
> baby formula and recycled cooking oil and so on and so on, it seems to 
> me the Golden Rule in China is,
>
> “Screw your neighbor as you would not yourself be screwed.”
>
> That said, I recollect years ago, when dealing with a metal scrap 
> dealer who was picking up our scrap metal
>
> where I worked, one of their employees laughed when telling us about a 
> container shipment of scrap metal
>
> bound for China that they had half filled with dirt. So there are 
> dirty amoral crooks on both sides.
>
> -Hue Miller
>
>
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