Any bad capacitor brands?

Oh these too:

Kemet AVX Mallory

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

Good day!

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

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.

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

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

Thanks, Rich

How about those oil-filled ones containing carcinogic PCBs?

Leon

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.

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? (;-)

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!

(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.

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 s***ty 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:

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

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

Cheers Terry

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

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