Re-Reeeling of electronics components causing ESD damage.

What is the chances of electronics components suffering ESD damage due to poor component re-reeling practices?

In UK , we have no significant semiconductor fabrication plants…therefore, components that get here do so by whatever napharious means. Large electronics corporations have large numbers of partially used component reels left over after various reflow production runs. These reels are sold back to subsidiaries of component distributors, who then combine and re-reel them onto new reels, so as to make full reels of components, which just look as if they have come straight from the semiconductor fabrication plant…….very often, such re-reeling is done by staff acting without proper ESD protection. Much of the re-reeling is also done in the Far East, because this is where most of the world’s electronics production happens.

UK distributors are grateful to buy up these cheap re-reeled components….and pretend that they are “fresh from the semiconductor plant”. UK electronics companies then use them and find that their products are regularly blowing up due to ESD damage. Mainland European companies etc don’t have this problem, since they have special relations with semiconductor plants like ST, Infineon, NXP etc etc…so they can buy reels safe in the knowledge that they really are “straight from the semicon plant”.



The UK has no such special relationships with semicon plants…..and the Far Eastern re-reelers are happy to sell duff re-reeled components to the UK, …happy that this will make British made electronics products less reliable than their own Far Eastern exports to UK……..thus increasing the dependency of UK on the Far East etc.

So just how bad has this ESD damage caused by re-reeling of components become?

Aren't static-sensitive components in static-dissipative tape?

Sounds like another conspiracy theory.

You've got issues.... If you buy from reputable companies, then you won't need to go out of your way to find these outlandish news feeds...

Paranoid?

By UK companies, do you just mean your company?

Aren't static-sensitive components in static-dissipative tape?

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thanks, yes and they get taken out of it when they are on a partial reel...and along with other ones from other partial reels...they are then re-inserted into another reel with anti-static tape round it...(to make up a "new" full reel)......its the bit inbetween when they are getting taken off one reel and put on the other....thats when the static damage can occur.....specially because this work is often done by 8 year old kids in the Far East....who are working in rooms which are barely even lit.

Paranoid?

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…well, I tell you something else….in the Far East, electronics production workers sometimes go on strike…not because they are not being payed enough…but because they are literally starving because they haven’t eaten for days…….this isn’t paranoid…this is the World in 2018….and yes…its these poor souls who are doing this re-reeling work.

Indeed yes, in the West , our politicians have decided that we should “benefit” from cheap products from the Far East…made by poor people working under not much better rights than slaves....our Western "Middle-men" skim off a sizeable middle-man mark-up, so that you the customer, dont actually get the products as cheaply as they could be. The loosers are the slaves, thay have to slog that bit harder to account for that juicy 'middle-man' mark-up.

At one company, an engineer showed me his photos from his “work visit” to our Chinese production factory………in one photo, they were round a meal table in a restaurant….one of the staff was a sickly pale girl looking no more than 13 years old….he bragged to me how he had had sex with her…………I was sick to the core…..to think, that poor girl was probably “bred” and groomed ready to have sex on demand with Western “business visitors.”

Do you actually have any hard evidence of ESD damage due to re-reeling, to components your company has bought from a reputable source? If so, take up the matter with your supplier. But proving that any ESD damage occurred in the Far East rather than in your company's manufacturing facility might be a tad difficult .

Wow. Any evidence of people removing parts from tape and inserting them into new tape by hand? That would be pretty amazing, especially ensuring every part is correctly oriented.

What theories do you have now?

Let's see. Testing labs falsifying results against small companies. A world conspiracy to keep capacitor-free LED streetlight designs from the world. Then there's the one about flicker standards favoring big businesses. Secret contracts between large companies and suppliers...... I know I've missed a lot of them.

Do pick and place machines really have no method to use up to the end of the tape?

Mike.

Digikey sells stuff as Digi-reels. So, they effectively put it on a new reel and attach the leader. So, you can effectively get a reel with 100 parts rather than 3000. Mouser has mouse reels.

Wow. Any evidence of people removing parts from tape and inserting them into new tape by hand? That would be pretty amazing, especially ensuring every part is correctly oriented.

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i suspect there is help from machines, but there is a "hand" element in the process.

Flyback said:

... by whatever napharious means.

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"Napharious"? Methinks you meant "nefarious".