Any bad capacitor brands?

Hi:

Of the following, are there any to be avoided or can one reasonably expect no meaningful differences in quality:

Ceramic through-hole and SMD chip monolithic COG and X7R capacitors:

Vishay Epcos BC Panasonic

???

Thanks.

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Christopher R. Carlen
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Chris Carlen
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Oh these too:

Kemet AVX Mallory

Any favorites? Any votes for "worst stinkin' capacitor ever made?"

Good day!

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Christopher R. Carlen
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Chris Carlen

Yea, dont use those wax coated paper ones. They drip all over the place when the tubes get too hot.

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Luhan Monat (luhanis 'at' yahoo 'dot' com)
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Luhan Monat

I read in sci.electronics.design that Chris Carlen wrote (in ) about 'Any bad capacitor brands?--Addendum', on Thu, 10 Mar 2005:

Polystyrene caps are well-known for not tolerating raised temperatures, but in the 1970s we had some that melted if you stared at them. We also had a number of brands of elco that should not have existed.

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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
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John Woodgate

After they explode, they are not so safe - it happens!

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Luhan Monat (luhanis 'at' yahoo 'dot' com)
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Luhan Monat

Yeah - I thought that the big selling point for PCBs was that they don't burn well.

Thanks, Rich

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Rich Grise

How about those oil-filled ones containing carcinogic PCBs?

Leon

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Leon Heller, G1HSM
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Leon Heller

I read in sci.electronics.design that Leon Heller wrote (in ) about 'Any bad capacitor brands?--Addendum', on Fri, 11 Mar 2005:

Well, you aren't supposed to take them apart. While sealed in the cans. they are quite safe.

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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
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John Woodgate

I read in sci.electronics.design that Luhan Monat wrote (in ) about 'Any bad capacitor brands?-- Addendum', on Fri, 11 Mar 2005:

What danger are they in? (;-)

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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
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John Woodgate

I've been sticking with Panasonic FC electrolytics.

You don't like BC eh? I wonder about their ceramic mono caps?

How about Epcos and Vishay?

Good day!

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Christopher R. Carlen
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Chris Carlen

(snip)

Have you seen their new FM series? They have about half the ESR, almost twice the ripple current rating and for less money. They don't yet come in as wide a range of sizes, though. I swapped some FC for FM in a switching regulator, recently, with a nice improvement in performance.

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John Popelish
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John Popelish

I have had problems with no-name 100nF 25V caps going short in 5V systems. As have companies I work for. I have also seen a wide variety of really shitty electrolytic capacitors - I once debugged a TL431 5V reference that was oscillating, due to the 27 Ohms ESR of the 10uF 16V cap we picked (at random). Yep, 27 Ohms at room temperature.

For electrolytic caps, I do the following:

1) always buy 105C rated caps - crappy caps often dont even have a temperature rating marked on them.

2) if they dont specify ripple & ESR, dont buy them

3) stick to a small number of known-good manufacturers.

Japanese caps are great - nichicon, hitachi AIC, nippon/united chemicon. BC caps are fairly crap (wrt specs) by comparison

4) always obey rule 3, especially for smt parts - Rs, Cs etc.

Cheers Terry

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Terry Given

Only because every time I check their electrolytics are way behind the Japanese in terms of ripple current, ESR and lifetime. Other than that, they make great stuff and I often use their discretes.

good and good (albeit often expensive).

I once had some 0.1% Vishay leaded parts that were +/-15%. We weren't using many Vishay parts, but their response was *fantastic* - within a week I had a 20 page report, with SEM pic's of the materials involved, a detailed description of what went wrong and why, how many parts were affected, how they modified the production process to detect/obviate the cause etc. And we got a whole bunch of replacement parts free of charge.

Cheers Terry

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Terry Given

They haven't been made in 30 years, at least not in the western would.

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ratman

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