AliExpress: friend or foe? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: djacobow
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 04, 2018, 09:47:54 pm
content: I've designed a simple toy gizmo that uses a lot of chip LEDs. For my pilot run, I used a Chinese PCBA that gave me US distributor pricing for components. One of the components was an 0805 LED: HSMA-C170, for which Digikey is currently asking $160 per 1000. That's right, $0.16/LED. Mouser price is similar. There are cheaper LEDs, but not by much for same size / color / brightness. LEDs are a big chunk of the BOM.I was browsing AliExpress for fun and found two folks selling "similar seeming" LEDs (no datasheets, natch) for $5.34 and $4.35 per 1000. That's right, the cheaper one is 0.00435/LED, or ~1/37th the price of legit digikey.Now, at that price, I had to order some from Ali just to see what came! I was fully expecting a bag of duds, floor sweepings, packet of sand, who knows, right? What arrived from the first seller (only one I got so far) was a package mailed from Kentucky that contained a tape of LEDs (no reel), the first 30 of which I have examined work fine. I assembled one of my products with them, and it works. I mean, the LEDs seem good. (They are more orange than amber, but it doesn't matter in this app.)Now, I know the many hazards of putting AliExpress in your supply chain. My product is part what I would call an experimental toe-dipping personal business, and so I can take some supply risk. At the same time, I'd still be a bit nervous to send these tapes to an assembler not knowing if the rest of the tape are fakes, or that they all will have high infant mortality, etc.That said, that price difference is vast. I know there are cheaper LEDs on Digikey but not a whole lot cheaper for same size / color / brightness.So what is going on here?Let's say the AliExpress LEDs are vastly inferior. Okay, so maybe that gets you a 3x or 4x price difference. And maybe Digikey is taking their cut, so maybe another 2x? And maybe the manufacturer is getting a higher margin, so another 2x. You still don't get to this vast price difference.I'm honestly curious. How does this work? Who is getting money in the Digikey scenario that is not getting money in the AliExpress scenario?

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 04, 2018, 09:53:57 pm
content: Try LCSC. Right in the middle between the two.I rarely get anything dud. Got a few big winners as well. £10 each for an AD8307 here. Got ten for £2.90 off aliexpress and they work absolutely perfectly!

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 04, 2018, 10:10:36 pm
content: Alibaba is a business to business e-commerce site. AliExpress is theretailside of Alibaba. In some aspects, Amazon is 1 and Alibaba is 2, but for the most part, they are the two leaders e-commerce.It sounds like you are making things as product, Alibaba is more suitable than AliExpress. If you are using anything from China, chances are, part of your supply chain is already depending on Alibaba.Alibaba vs Amazon metrics as 5/4/2018Company Total Revenue (ttm) Revenue per share (ttm) Operating Margins Quarterly Earnings GrowthAlibaba $36.00B $14.14 31.28% 34.80%Amazon $177.87B 370.55 2.31 147.90Above quoted from:https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2018/05/06/why-alibaba-is-more-profitable-than-amazon

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 04, 2018, 10:14:25 pm
content: Coincidentally I just today went on an Aliexpress spending spree - a few thousand total of about 20 Various types of LEDs for about $100, mostly out of curiosity to compare brightness etc. with brand-names for a few upcoming jobs.In the past I've had a few thousand 0402s and a few hundred 0404 RGBs and had zero issues. Intensity of the RGBs maybe not quite up with the Osrams &AvagoBroadcoms of this world but perfectly fine for a lot of applications.One issue is you may not be able to find the exact same type a year from now but they're often cheap enough to buy plenty of stock.LEDs aren't the sort of thing that can be knocked up on a kitchen table so hard to see how you'd end up with total junk with taped SMD parts. The brightness and uniformity may be a little less uniform & well specified - all brand-names guarantee close bin matching of parts on a reel and you can often order specific bin groups which is part of the cost of the brand-name prtsI have yet to use Aliexpress LEDs for a permanent installation but for that sort of thing parts cost isn't a big enough proportion of the cost to be worth the risk.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 04, 2018, 10:17:02 pm
content: One risk with Aliexpress is you don't really know who you are dealing with - look at the product range of some sellers and they're clearly just brokers & middle-men. You could order the same thing twice and get very different specs.Perhaps different peak wavelengths or colour temps package thicknesses, maybe even RGB LEDs with different pinouts

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 04, 2018, 10:29:37 pm
content: If the vendor is selling LED's and panties, beauty supplies, clothes - a generic store, then I think they pick stuff up anywhere and very high risk to get ripped off.Stick to stores that only deal with LED's and even then, lately I'm finding eBay has better pricing and quality.Aliexpress I've received more duds and fakes. Ranpo store was awful for LED's yet another store was terrific for discrete LED's.

author: djacobow
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 04, 2018, 11:01:48 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on October 04, 2018, 10:17:02 pmThanks for the good information, Mike.The sellers I bought from are these guys:I am indeed trying to build products to sell, but I'm strictly at the amateur-hour-getting-started level:https://www.southberkeleyelectronics.com/home/2018-hanukias(selling on Amazon and Tindie). It's sort of a learning project. I've never tried to start a business before.That said, these stakes are low enough that I think I can maybe deal with the supply risk. And the prices are definitely low enough that I can make the investment in 10,000 LEDs now and deal with having to spin the board for a new part outline when that time comes.Here's the toy with all the LEDs lit:

author: mrf184
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2018, 12:45:32 am
content: I have been using taobao parts in my products and haven't encountered defective parts. There are a few ICs that the assembler just couldn't source at acceptable prices. I do statistical quality control on the parts before sending them to the assembler, which involves taking a few parts from the tape at random locations (by carefully lifting off the clear plastic cover). After testing the removed parts I take new parts from the end of the tape and fill them into the old spots, and reseal the tape. For a 1000pcs tape I'd say testing 3 parts from each end of the tape plus 3 more from random locations should be good enough.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2018, 03:38:39 am
content: I've tried generic Chinese white LEDs that were garbage and faded after just a few months but I've never had a single problem with any of the other colors. I put a green one from an ebay assortment of ridiculously cheap LEDs in a nightlight about 5 years ago and it's been running 24/7 without any signs of deterioration. I wouldn't hesitate to use AliExpress LEDs in a consumer product.

author: djacobow
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2018, 04:37:50 pm
content: Quote from: mrf184 on October 05, 2018, 12:45:32 amI take it from your flag that you can read and write in Chinese! I need to find a site that skins Taobao in English! :-)

author: peteb2
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2018, 01:11:39 am
content: Utterlystiffedtwice for items from AliExpress. 1.) a set of 10 back-lit querty keyboards & 2.) 50x RTL USB dongles for SDR (radio) where NOTHING ever arrived. Then there were the things that did arrive and were SCAM product, a 5x 32GB microSDs and a little component tester thing. The SDs were not 32GB and the component tester simply didn't work.Gave up on their system because the compensation period runs out just when the goods No-Show.Any complaints ignored. Apparently ripping people off is considered OK by many that sell via the likes of Ali...Tried Bang.good.... similar experiences. Thank gawd it wasn't a large outlay.Back to using ebay and only with USA based people or some UK but shipping costs are killing even that.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 09, 2018, 11:47:42 pm
content: I just spent way too long browsing and buying 30-odd lines of sample bits fromhttps://lcsc.com/who are part of JLCPCB.Lots of obscure,insanely cheap chips from manufacturers you've never heard of ( 16 channel LED driver for 5 cents anyone?),voltage regs,battery charge chips etc., some with English datasheets, some Chinese only,though you can mostly figure stuff out from the drawings3v LDO under 2 cents :https://lcsc.com/product-detail/Low-Dropout-Regulators-LDO_SC6206B-65Z5-3-0V_C94023.html8 cent MCU with English datasheet (looks suspiciously like a PIC10) :https://lcsc.com/product-detail/MDT_MDT10P509S11_C112221.htmlEven Chinese-made FPGAs :https://lcsc.com/product-detail/CPLD-FPGA_AG1KQ48_C133766.htmlAnd CPLDs :https://lcsc.com/product-detail/CPLD-FPGA_EF1A300LG100_C134203.htmlAnd who knew you could buy SPI flash in SOT-23, preprogrammed with fonts....https://lcsc.com/product-detail/_Gotop-GT20L24F6Y_C126754.htmlAlso plenty of jellybean parts like LEDs ( plenty under a cent) etc.

author: djacobow
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 09, 2018, 11:59:45 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on October 09, 2018, 11:47:42 pmCool. This sounds like a fun place to explore!

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2018, 08:06:18 am
content: I love LCSC. Trying to do a stock, BOM and cost minimisation on something I’m working on at the moment. This is low volume personal use stuff but the problem scales up.I started with TI LDO for example. Bought a selection of LDOs from LCSC ranging from Holtech to Hottech. Evaluated them all. Zero performance difference through shorts and transients as well. So now I carry one 100mA 3.3V LDO in SOT89 and that’s it. Ands it’s 5 cents a go versus $1 for the TI. Most passives don’t even round up to a cent. No problems with quality regardless of brand so far.Lead time is 6 working days for me and you get all the stuff you actually want delivered rather than sudden back ordering like Farnell or missing stuff from CPC or a thorough wallet raping from RS.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 10, 2018, 08:14:03 am
content: Video released tomorrow on LCSC:

author: chickenHeadKnob
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2018, 08:51:51 am
content: Dave, in your review of the Paduak processor data sheet you made a questioning noise about min clock speed of zero. That is important! it means in other words the processor is fully static, no DRAM registers like early 8-bit NMOS standards. So the the processor can be single-stepped via the clock line for debugging.

author: MarkR42
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2018, 08:55:54 am
content: Most of the stuff I ordered was ok.One vendor sent me a short order of MCU breakout boards, the boards were absolutely fine, but they sent rather fewer than I ordered, but they were so cheap I couldn't be bothered to quibble.

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2018, 08:59:12 am
content: I don't understand the willingness of people to put that stuff in consumer grade projects.Sure, xx% of stuff there will be decent (fill in your own number there) but certainly not xxx%.There are maybe dozens of ways you can cut corners in LED production and i'm guessing they ticked all the boxes. If you want to go cheap, contact a known-good LED manufacturer, even if they are Chinese, and get stuff from them.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2018, 09:16:09 am
content: You're mainly paying for low overheads and local supply chain. Most of the consumer crap thrown out has that stuff in it already.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2018, 04:07:43 pm
content: I noticed similar pricing for SMD resistors. It seems Mouser and DigiKey have really upped the price for small (less than full reel) quantities. A couple of years ago, I bought 1000 10K 1206 resistors for $15 from Mouser. Today, 1000 would cost me $180! But wait - I could buy a whole reel of 5000 for $50!I get quantity pricing, really I do, but this is a little extreme. When I bought the 1000, I cold have gotten a whole reel at a per piece cost of less than I paid, but still the 5000 would have cost more than the 1000. In fact I think it was about the same, $50 for the whole reel. The flip point was about 3300 - if you needed more it was cheaper to get the 5000, in terms of total cost, but if you needed that number of fewer, it was cheaper to get just what you needed. Now that point it less than 300 - 300 will cost you more than 5000. For hobbyist level building, this is nuts.Poor fellow I was trying to help out, he found some from a Chinese seller on ebay for the typical super low prices - and got ones that had the connections on the 12 mil side, so they were more like 0612 (this guy, and my, purchases were not for installing in an electronic circuit, but for attaching to the wheels of model railroad cars to trigger current based track occupancy circuits, that's why the ones with the connections on the long side did not work - physical issue). When he saw how much they were for less than full reel qunatities, he ended up buying a full reel even though he only needed a couple of hundred pieces. The rest he hopes to sell off on ebay.

author: mzzj
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2018, 04:22:04 pm
content: Quote from: peteb2 on October 08, 2018, 01:11:39 amAliexpress refunds have been more straightforward for me than Ebay .