Friday, September 24th 2021
The New Chip Shortage is Passive Components
If you thought that the chip shortage was bad, then the building shortage of passive components, such as capacitors, resistors, inductors and so on, is going to have you in tears. Due to lockdowns in Malaysia and Indonesia, where most of the well known Japanese aluminium capacitors are made, the factories of Chemi-Con, Nichicon and Rubycon have been shut down for most of July and August. The three companies together control some 50 percent of the capacitor market and it's expected that the current situation in Malaysia will lead to a reduction in capacitor shipments by 30 to 60 percent.
At the same time, the increased demand for everything from computer parts to renewable energy technology has ramped up demand for these components. Some of that business has been picked up by Taiwanese and Chinese manufacturers, but whereas in the past you could get your order in some four to six weeks, the lead times are now three to six months and that's if you're lucky. DigiTimes is reporting that several Taiwanese component makers have seen a YoY revenue growth of 20 percent or more for the first half of this year.
This has in turn led to some of the Taiwanese capacitor manufacturers eyeing buyouts of their suppliers to be able to provide a more streamlined and secured manufacturing pipeline, where they don't have to worry about their competitors buying up stock from their suppliers. The shortage isn't expected to ease in 2021, although if things improve in Malaysia and Indonesia, 2022 might see better supply of these vital components, but right now it's anyone's guess what will happen in the longer term.
Source:
DigiTimes
At the same time, the increased demand for everything from computer parts to renewable energy technology has ramped up demand for these components. Some of that business has been picked up by Taiwanese and Chinese manufacturers, but whereas in the past you could get your order in some four to six weeks, the lead times are now three to six months and that's if you're lucky. DigiTimes is reporting that several Taiwanese component makers have seen a YoY revenue growth of 20 percent or more for the first half of this year.
46 Comments on The New Chip Shortage is Passive Components
My all personal projects are on HOLD.... Premium part orders are back in supply only next year...
Well... I guess drinking beer is only that's left.
Chatting with my Mikrotik friends, they suffer from it even longer, like a year and cannot even push out premium product lines... Private sector was the last to take a hit.
Well, the demand for electronics will keep increasing so it would make sense to have more capacity in manufacture of those anyway in my view.
www.gsmarena.com/global_chip_shortage_hits_alltime_high_with_a_wait_time_of_21_weeks-news-51079.php
Mine doesn't, RMA it if you dare. QC issues.
I have to admit, I had a case with my secondary acer monitor, that whined... but at least they all do. I fixed it myself tho.
Had this issue at a company I worked for and apparently the engineers were deaf, as none of them heard it. Luckily it was on a mezzanine board, so it was easy for them to change the design.
My Acer panel also had a dumb PCB design, it may look pretty, like streets and houses assembled in close groups... some stupid PCB designer with artist traits and no field knowledge Blame them. My panel driver board supply whined, of course it was the MLCC section besides vreg... it didn't whine on lower refresh rate 60Hz, because less current is consumed, setting 165Hz a concert starts. Caps are aligned too close with each, they resonate, the PCB is too thin, the PCB was glued with double sided adhesive to the IPS panel metal shroud it all made it act like a speaker. I made a effect from defect, I removed the adhesive and put Thermal pads beneath and above the PCB to dampen the vibrations, with doubled benefit of cooling. It mitigated the noise immediately and for my surprise it is a good monitor now, I use it in landscape mode always besides my main monitor, for web and datasheets.
But the moral, that on day one after buying a monitor, I had to fix it... isn't very pleasing, maybe my karma played here. But after reading some Reddit complaints also, I decided that RMA won't help and they all are like that - for deaf people lol. There are many people where they live it is all noisy, silence isn't found even at nights, let it be AC, work environment, like chat, PC Fans, kids, traffic, haunted house, thus they even do not notice. Maybe that was the real excuse for engineers in your case.
Coil whine drives me nuts, but in all fairness, it only happened when you transmitted data over the 5GHz radio, which they apparently hadn't tested...
This is why it's important you test all parts of a product before you ok an a design.
I forgot, there is one more possibility for... tinnitus, they hear the noise all the time, so yolo it ain't different as usual :D
Actually while on topic, the higher PD revision(like the other news topic) could imply use of better controllers and parts to ensure efficiency... but still it will not save from bad design or some batch of poor quality parts. And in these times, when there is part unobtainium... people make things from anything. So brace ourselves.
This is also why I never sourced the cheapest possible power adapter for my clients, as they simply are shite and for 50 cents or so, it's not worth the complaints.
Yeah, last time I got that when I was designing an unorthodox high voltage step up supply for guitar effect pedal, years ago, when overdriving it with such unusual load, it went nuts, now there are some nice specialized IC's for... guess what... nixie clocks, and they work perfect and are noiseless regarding voltage noise also, I don't even understand why they are made. There are still some innovations in high voltage department even in these days, that's actually unusual, the best thing being the LR8N high voltage linear vreg allowing to get rid of 500g of 10H choke for each preamp tube section and making it totally silent and few other know how things regarding tube degradation and biasing. Oh well my, my free time side job high voltage ventures...
Even so, this was something like the third or fourth revision of the mezzanine board, as we ended up swapping several things around due to EMI issues.
This was a much earlier board revision. and pretty much everything changed from this revision until we shipped nearly a year later...
And now we're way off topic...
www.supplychaindive.com/news/cardboard-prices-ecommerce-corrugated-box-paper/597879/