OT: Counterfeit fuses?

This has got to be my first new thread with nothing to do with PICAXE, Rev-Ed or the forum.

Today I received the Chinese AC adaptors (with "fused cord") I bought off you-know-where and the Bussmann-brand fuses included look a bit suspicious. The ends come off with a little bit of effort using pliers, which I couldn't do with the Bussmann-branded fuse from an Antex soldering iron. The suspect fuses have a bigger CCC logo, a smaller ASTA logo and a dotted line instead of a solid one beneath "BS 1362" compared to the genuine fuse.

Picture:



Yes, there is a bit of wire sticking out of the end cap on the leftmost fuse. And the fuse wire is flat.

Wikipedia says:

BS 1362 specifies sand-filled ceramic-bodied cylindrical fuses

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No sand came out of the fuse.

Looking for an expert verdict - are they fake?

P.S. I suppose this does have something to do with PICAXE - I wouldn't want to power one from an AC adaptor powered with a cable using these fuses if they are fake. The plug that they came from is marked "EL-210A"; "FUSED" but with no approval marks and there is a C5 connector at the other end.

nick12ab said:

Looking for an expert verdict.

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How about dropping them in to the
Trading Standards office of the local council?

Who knows, but they might be a danger to users?

e

There's probably a little factory full of dollar-a-day people drilling out blown or duff fuses and stuffing fuse wire in.

I'd be tempted to take some closer-up images and send them to Cooper-Bussman technical section expressing your concerns.
Then, if appropriate, take the evidence to Trading-Standards as suggested highlighting possible danger and possible illegal trading/manufacture.
I don't know if you will get very far but, at the very least, you will have made the attempt to get potentially dangerous product (partly) off the market.
But while there is a market for cheap & nasty there will always be a thousand vendors selling this chod mostly based overseas.

At least you can say you have tried - so go for it. You may even get a thankyou from Bussmann e.g. fuses for life

nick12ab said:

Looking for an expert verdict - are they fake?

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That is the $64K question and it's hard to tell unless an expert, and part of the problem with fake and counterfeit goods.

If it's correct that for BS 1362 they should be sand-filled and they aren't that should raise some flags. I think the only things you can do is contact Bussmann or your local TSO ( at least they should be able to tell you who best to contact ) and continue to educate people that things may not always be what they may appear to be.

That's what I just said

Related to this discussion is an article I just read:

http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Counterfeit-electronics-keep-sleuths-busy-3850043.php

Jeff Haas said:

Related to this discussion is an article I just read:

http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Counterfeit-electronics-keep-sleuths-busy-3850043.php

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I'm sure the information is good,
but is there any way to stop the adverts

visually "screaming" at you? :-(

e

eclectic said:

I'm sure the information is good

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From the article;

"About 10 to 20 percent of the parts tested for counterfeiting turn out to be bogus"

So of the parts they are suspicious might be bogus, and they thus decide to investigate, only 10% turn out to be bogus after all ?

Good or bad or junk statistics ?

Maybe they faked the data?

eclectic, look into "AdBlock" for your browser.

Since the article is covering higher-end parts used in military and defense systems, it's possible the counterfeiting hasn't gotten as far there as it has with the less-expensive parts we see.

Are the fuses advertised as High Rupture Capacity (HRC) type. These type can handle fault currents up to 50 kA or 80 kA without the fuse body rupturing.
In a domestic environment I doubt that fault levels exceed 15 kA if near a transformer and may be down around 6 kA.
Glass body 3AG and 5AG fuses would have very low fault rupture ratings but people still use them.

Would be more interested in doing a test to see if the "silver" wire fuse element does fuse/"blow" at the designated current in accordance with some standard curve (long time on overload to rapid on Short circuit).

Edit:
A similar/worse situation occurs a couple of years ago when counterfeit Schneider Multi-9 circuit breakers were produced in China. They had a piece of bar from input to output and no actual internal trip mechanism. Guaranteed not to trip!

srnet said:

"About 10 to 20 percent of the parts tested for counterfeiting turn out to be bogus"

So of the parts they are suspicious might be bogus, and they thus decide to investigate, only 10% turn out to be bogus after all ?

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From "Integra Technologies, an independent laboratory, works with manufacturers and with the brokers to determine the authenticity of the chips before a contractor or manufacturer buys them" I would say that, when asked to obtain a part, a sample of all parts are tested. So there's no pre-suspicion of a particular part just routine testing of everything.

Dippy said:

<...>At least you can say you have tried - so go for it. You may even get a thankyou from Bussmann e.g. fuses for life

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In the States, it is more likely that Customs would show up at my door and charge me with importing dangerous items, conficate my adapters, and consider a fine to ensure that I never do anything like this again.

I'm a big complainer and love a good fight, but if I knowlingly import "cheap" items and find a bogus fuse, I'm just going to replace the fuse and keep my mouth shut (and my wallet.) Surely the savings were sufficient to replace a suspect fuse?

PM me your address and I'll mail you an envelop of sand... I have a 25 pount bag in the carport just in case there is ice in the winter on my driveway... got to get the wife off to work on time, you know


- Ray

PS: OK, I know safety stuff is very serious, but AC adapters from China... really, IF safe, they are likely to only be marginally so...

I bought a bag of mixed fuses from B&Q and they were Bussmanns - I had to destroy one to see inside it so I used a 5A one since that's used the least and sure enough - sand went everywhere, the fuse wire was round and there was a weird retainer system instead of it just being held against the side of the fuse by the end caps.

These Bussmann fuses do have the dashed line however the amount and position of the dashes varies between fuse rating.

mrburnette said:

In the States, it is more likely that Customs would show up at my door and charge me with importing dangerous items, conficate my adapters, and consider a fine to ensure that I never do anything like this again.

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The standard trick to avoid self-incrimination is to stick them in an envelope with a covering note and post them. You get all the fun of cutting words out of newspapers and a midnight dash to another neighbourhood's mail box disguised as a Ninja if so inclined

It's always a dilemma, turn a blind eye to the problem and hope no one else suffers through that, or go the extra mile when you really don't want to hoping some good will come out of it.

I have some more photos and I will be contacting the seller, "fast2worldwide", and who knows - I might get some money out of it since according to feedback they bribe dissatisfied customers:

Offered me £2 not to leave any feedback!

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The real ones would roll on any surface that was slightly curved whereas the fake ones roll like oval-handled screwdrivers.

I wouldn't want to power one from an AC adaptor powered with a cable using these fuses if they are fake.

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In all honesty what difference will the fuse make when used to power a picaxe?

The UK seem to have an addition with fuses and fused leads, often the only fuse in a system here is the circuit breaker protecting that wiring run on our main board, its not problem or it would not be a approved system in use here for as long as i can remember.

Not even all appliances have its own fuse and others are double insulated without an earth wire.

A single breaker is actually safer than a fuse in every outlet or appliance because the overall wiring run is protected and not permitting the mains cable to be exceeded in its rating, where as reliance on individual fuses causes a possible problem of a overload of the line rating.

In almost all cases if there is a fault in the circuit a RCD (residential current device) (or call eath leakage device too) will be the first to trip long before the fuse even thinks about getting warm.

Its a matter of what you think the fuse will do and save to the actual reality of what will happen regardless.

SAborn said:

In all honesty what difference will the fuse make when used to power a picaxe?

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Probably none as the PICAXE would start exploding if mains gets passed to the output before the fuse goes. But at least it won't finish exploding with a proper fuse!

SAborn said:

A single breaker is actually safer than a fuse in every outlet or appliance because the overall wiring run is protected and not permitting the mains cable to be exceeded in its rating, where as reliance on individual fuses causes a possible problem of a overload of the line rating.

In almost all cases if there is a fault in the circuit a RCD (residential current device) (or call eath leakage device too) will be the first to trip long before the fuse even thinks about getting warm.

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My house has individual circuit breakers for lighting upstairs and downstairs, "ring main" (sockets), cooker, and one for lights and sockets in the extension. There is also an overall RCD, not that that's much use with a supposedly "double insulated" power adapter.

nick12ab said:

I have some more photos and I will be contacting the seller, "fast2worldwide", and who knows - I might get some money out of it since according to feedback they bribe dissatisfied customers:
<...>

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I am staring at the pictures and noticing that the fuses are 10A... dude, that some serious current... am I missing a decimal point? And this is the Primary (mains) side of the line? I've seen small arc welders that only need a weebit more current from the primary!

Of course, you may wake some morning 6 or 8 weeks from now with a yard full of sand... A coworker who happened to be Chinese used to never tell jokes and I asked him why to which he responded, "You would not understand Chinese humor." And he was likely correct.

- Ray

Overcurrent follies

A good thing to remember in the USA is to not use a post 1980 'copper' penny in a fuse socket as the have been made 90+% zinc for decades now... not the current carrying capacity of old Strips of aluminum foil work about as well as they always did still ;-0

I have piles of very old fuses [and circuit breakers] and often use the more modern PTC which happily resets on cooling - these can be put near your regulator transistor to add to it's quicker action when the transistor is hot.

I think the new arc fault interrupter circuit breaker is a good thing for house wiring as I've seen arcs which are flaming but not blowing the breaker... so many ways to make smoke - so little time... [and burning ICs smell awful].

SAborn said:

A single breaker is actually safer than a fuse in every outlet or appliance because the overall wiring run is protected and not permitting the mains cable to be exceeded in its rating, where as reliance on individual fuses causes a possible problem of a overload of the line rating.

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UK rings and appliances are protected by decreasing values of fuses, for a made up illustration, 100A on household inlet, 20A to each ring, and 5A in each plug to the appliance.

The principle being that each fuse protects what's downstream of it; the 5A fuse protects the appliance cable rated at 5A. If there were a fault in the appliance, and the 100A or 20A fuse were relied on alone, the 5A cable could be overheating and burning the house down with neither 100A nor 20A fuse batting an eyelid.

hippy said:

UK rings and appliances are protected by decreasing values of fuses, for a made up illustration, 100A on household inlet, 20A to each ring, and 5A in each plug to the appliance.

The principle being that each fuse protects what's downstream of it; the 5A fuse protects the appliance cable rated at 5A. If there were a fault in the appliance, and the 100A or 20A fuse were relied on alone, the 5A cable could be overheating and burning the house down with neither 100A nor 20A fuse batting an eyelid.

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This is, as stated, the UK standard method of protected wiring; the problem with this thread is that the forum is international and each country seems to have its own method of protecting electrical wiring; therefore the comments made are not transferable to other locations.

The UK uses a ring main; each socket having two cables entering it and providing power. Some countries seem to use star distribution. I have often wondered whilst looking at 20amp circuit breaker, how on earth a 5 amp cable on an appliance is protected without a fuse in the plug. The principle of downstream protection, as succinctly described by Hippy, seems the most logical way of protecting electrical systems. And of course the lowest value fuse for use in the UK plug is rated at 3 amps, a rating most appropriate to small electronic items such as radios etc.

Earth-leakage breakers do just that; they break the current if there is an imbalance between the live and neutral lines indicating that current is leaking to earth. These do not, and cannot, react to a current overload such as a direct short circuit between live and neutral - a fuse or magnetic circuit breaker is the appropriate device to deal with this.

When I buy anything from "you know who," my basic assumption is that it's fake. That's why I'm not paying the retail price for it. The only questions I have are, "Is it safe," and "Does it work?" I figure that's my responsibility to figure out. As for buying mail-order fuses from outside the US? Not just no, but no, no, no.

eclectic said:

is there any way to stop the adverts

visually "screaming" at you? :-(

e

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I run FireFox with a slew of add-ons to prevent this kind of thing. Makes browsing much nicer when there's less noise to signal happening.

Adblock+ & NoScript deal with removing most adverts, then I have Greasemonkey installed for scripts to alter/enhance websites which enables me to remove even more unwanted junk through custom scripts, and then Ghostery to help stop all those ad tracking cookies.

Occasionally I come across a page/site that just fails to load up properly even with the add-ons turned off for that site, so I load up IE or try another machine just to see that page/site.

Why do you people hate ebay?

Jakob2803 said:

Why do you people hate ebay?

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It's not "hate", it is more "love/hate". The products are cheap, so we want them. They take forever to get to the destination, we hate 'em for the shipping time. The products are sometimes sketchy... we hate 'em because exchange is too costly... just try to ship something to China 'free'. The Chinese are dumping products and killing jobs, we hate 'em. The designers are in our countries and we love their designs, so we love to order the products. We hate it that we are killing domestic production by buying from China but it is difficult to justify $79 when the same (compatible/clone/faux) is only $19 shipped.

We hate ourselves. We love saving money. We are ashamed, but we will do it again. eBay is just a vehicle to transit our orders and PayPal just a crook to take our cash.

- Ray

I like ebay mostly - I've sold a lot of stuff there as well as bought stuff; for many years now - it's a marketplace and I've have very few bad experiences with mis-represented or defective merchandise and those were resolved with the sellers. As far as global trade and its implications - too complex for this forum! [a neighbor had a "Go Metric" bumper sticker on his USA car which isn't metric... we ARE confused...]

mrburnette said:

It's not "hate", it is more "love/hate". The products are cheap, so we want them. They take forever to get to the destination, we hate 'em for the shipping time. The products are sometimes sketchy... we hate 'em because exchange is too costly... just try to ship something to China 'free'. The Chinese are dumping products and killing jobs, we hate 'em. The designers are in our countries and we love their designs, so we love to order the products. We hate it that we are killing domestic production by buying from China but it is difficult to justify $79 when the same (compatible/clone/faux) is only $19 shipped.

We hate ourselves. We love saving money. We are ashamed, but we will do it again. eBay is just a vehicle to transit our orders and PayPal just a crook to take our cash.

- Ray

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I order stuff over eBay from the UK and it takes a couple of days and is much cheaper than buying domestically.

mrburnette said:

It's not "hate", it is more "love/hate".
...
We hate ourselves. We love saving money. We are ashamed, but we will do it again. eBay is just a vehicle to transit our orders and PayPal just a crook to take our cash.

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I read that whilst listening to a folk song... It came out as quite a nice poem in my head....

Come on. Hands up who remembers what it was like before ebay. And before the internet? Remember having to purchase postal orders in the post office and send them snailmail to an address from a small ad in the back of an electronics mag?

The incredible ease of use and massive variety of products outweighs all the drawbacks, and then some. IMHO.

How quickly we forget.

Jakob2803 said:

Why do you people hate ebay?

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I don't hate it. It's a tool. I use it. But like many tools I use, I know enough about its nature not to trust it with my life. Buying fuses off eBay is trusting it with my life.

westaust55 said:

Would be more interested in doing a test to see if the "silver" wire fuse element does fuse/"blow" at the designated current in accordance with some standard curve (long time on overload to rapid on Short circuit).

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I haven't done detailed tests but I have got a counterfeit to blow using this PICAXE-based model rocket launcher which I might post on the forum eventually. It has a countdown timer (duration controlled by potentiometer) and it turns on a 10A-rated relay for 0.5s once the timer reaches 0.



It was powered by a 12V lead acid battery. Thick wires connect one end of the fuse contact and one end of the relay to the DC jack, but there is just a stripboard trace connecting the fuse to the relay.



On the first attempt, the fuse did not blow and a stripboard trace was partially vapourised in a small puff of smoke. I soldered a thick bit of uninsulated wire on the stripboard to allow for higher currents and the fuse was blown on the next attempt and non-violently too (but that was at low voltage).

John West said:

I don't hate it. It's a tool. I use it. But like many tools I use, I know enough about its nature not to trust it with my life. Buying fuses off eBay is trusting it with my life.

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Well put, I've been buying/selling on eBay for over 12 years now and it's an interesting 'game', one of the most important things is not to spend or sell something for more than you can afford to lose if things go tits up, you also learn to spot the gold amongst the fools gold and the very important lesson of throwing caution to the wind and having the patience of a Budda when buying from China

@Jamster - that's a Country & Western song

@Boriz 60 years ago I'd buy mail order from a little electronics supply store in Boston, MA called "Radio Shack" - the anticipation and excitment of packages arriving after a week or two is now duplicated by waiting for stuff from China I'll have to admit getting data sheets in a few minutes instead of weeks is a lot more pleasant....

The seller has suddenly issued a full refund and demanded that I return the chargers to their "logistics provider". They claimed they would refund return postage when I provide evidence of the return postage cost.

I never agreed to doing this - this was completely the seller's idea. What should I do? Return them, only return the fuses or not return anything? Or wait for Trading Standards to do something about it?

Maybe the seller has read this thread and is buying back the evidence
(That's a joke by the way).

Where is the actual seller based?

Dippy said:

Where is the actual seller based?

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China.

ADDED: The seller (fast2worldwide) is chinese but they post from the UK. I get the impression that the UK warehouse is subcontracted rather than actually owned by the chinese seller. They want the items posted to this UK warehouse.

ADDED (2): Just brilliant! The model rocket launcher device's photo is the first Google Images result for 'counterfeit fuse' and 'counterfeit fuses'. And it is a launcher for model rockets, not a model launcher for rockets.

Return = no evidence.

I should have mentioned this - the seller first offered a refund without me having to return anything but with a request to leave good feedback (i.e. a bribe). I said OK. Much later they claimed that their supplier wanted to see the goods and required me to post them back and I replied that it's just the fuses that are the issue and didn't say that they should continue (or abort) the idea of refunding me. They then issued the refund and gave me an address to send everything back to.

If I don't send back anything or just the fuses, would I get locked up for theft? Or not as I never agreed to sending back anything for the refund?

Well you posted it by standard mail didnt you? ( no tracking ticket issued)
Then its not your fault they never received it.
You could have made a error with the address, it happens.

Did they refund you for all your lost/wasted time, you should be compensated for that.