Samtec offers an extensive line of Tiger Eye products, among them the handy example part number SFMC-109-03-S-D. When ordering these parts in large batches or over time, you’ll notice that the part markings are inconsistent - their location on the product might change, or they might even be absent entirely. Is this a quality control issue, and are the parts bad?
Not at all. The answer is that this particular part number is a factory value-added part from Samtec; it’s cut down from a longer master part number, much the same way DigiKey does for many of our own offerings. In this case, the part markings are consistent on that larger master part number, but because your piece of the master number can come from anywhere on its length, the value-added part does not have a consistent marking schema. Samtec is aware of this and does not consider markings to be a critical or controlled feature of the cut-down product. So long as the product conforms to the specs for the part? The markings will be what they will and the part will be considered in specification.