Ceramic cap hoarding

Almost nobody has any 1 uF 25V or 50V X7R 0603 caps in stock, despite having hundreds of thousands on order. Octopart's estimated stock numbers are way out of date, and the few distributors that have any are selling them very fast.

Irritating.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com
Reply to
Phil Hobbs
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Not guilty, your honour. To be clear, I *do* hoard loads of ceramics, but none of them are remotely that large. ;-)

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Reply to
Cursitor Doom

Digikey seems to have a few K in stock.

Is the value critical? There are lots of others from 0.68 to 1.5 uF in stock at Mouser.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Reply to
John Larkin

Digikey seems to have a few K in stock.

Is the value critical? There are lots of others from 0.68 to 1.5 uF in stock at Mouser.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement 

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Reply to
Harry D

I had this problem a few weeks ago with a couple of ceramic caps. We found stock to get our run going, but I started checking around in case we ran i nto this again. Seems there are a number of values around 1 uF that are mu ch less in demand and so would do the job if you aren't worried about too m uch capacitance, which nearly no one using ceramic devices are. I'm not su re I was looking for an X7R device, might have been an X5R part, but the sa me should hold for X7R.

I was told back in January that ceramic caps were going on allocation. I d on't know how much hording is going on exactly, but I bet a *lot* of the ba ck ordering is future hording. I recall a report of an exercise in a colle ge class where a supply chain was set up. The first guy gave orders to the next, and this guy decided what to order from the next and so on with five or six layers. By the end of the exercise the orders to the last guy in t he chain were way up and down with wild oscillations. When the students as ked the first guy, he said the instructor had told him to order 100 each ti me. lol

I have some excess inventory. Maybe there is a profit opportunity.

Rick C.

Reply to
gnuarm.deletethisbit

Yes, MLCC caps are highly constrained right now. We have engineers redesigning boards around large MLCCs just to keep the plants open and customers supplied. Inductors aren't good, either. I'm told by suppliers that transistors and diodes are next.

Reply to
krw

AND don't care about the CV curve.

Reply to
krw

That's the issue. Murata and TDK actually publish C(V) curves, but everybody else AFAIK keeps them a deep dark secret.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

or increase C_nominal by a factor of 10!

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

I don't typically see much difference in the CV curve between X5R and X7R.

Rick C.

Reply to
gnuarm.deletethisbit

And KEMET, and Samsung (sometimes). Who does that leave? Taiyo Yuden does not. Venkel, if you're in high volume, I guess -- I haven't seen if they do or not.

Or if you're Joerg, none of these data "exist"...

Tim

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Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design 
Website: https://www.seventransistorlabs.com/
Reply to
Tim Williams

I haven't seen Kemet or Samsung publish C(V) curves for individual part numbers. Do you have a link for either? It would be nice to have.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

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Used to be available as an executable only, now it's online. Murata too.

Samsung's website isn't much help, last I looked. Seems like a bit under half their datasheets randomly have characteristics. Digikey has several PDFs linked to a part, not just the you see in the search view. Click onto the part page.

Oh... and watch out for 404s, because they're dumb like that, too? Like this one would, except the Characteristics sheet is 404:

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But this one works:
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Here's one without chars:
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It looks like [working] char sheets are more common now, maybe they've been rolling them out ever so slowly?

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design 
Website: https://www.seventransistorlabs.com/
Reply to
Tim Williams

IMHO, 0603 parts are going to see less usage over the next few years, and a lot of EOL notices. I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of recent capacitor shortages involve 0603 parts.

0603s are not really any easier to handle than 0402s, but they take up twice the real estate. AFAIK there are no machines or processes in industry that can handle 0603s but not 0402s.

Yes, the voltage ratings on 0603 caps are higher, but how often is that really an issue, even taking voltage coefficient into account? (Almost) nobody needs 50 volt 0603 caps.

Most data sheets I've seen lately come right out and tell you to use

0402s, even on regulators. That sounds like good advice. When something bigger is needed, 0805 or 1206 caps always seem to be available.

-- john, KE5FX

Reply to
John Miles, KE5FX

Very nice, thanks!

Cheers

Phil hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

Maybe you don't, but since higher values drop by 80% or so at rated voltage, I use a lot of 50V caps on 12-15V rails.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

e
)

I recently had to cross some parts and found that even a 50 volt MLCC has s ignificant capacitance drop at 12 volts. I want to say it was still below

25% of rated value. That was true of both the X7R and X5R formulations. S ince the board has been working for years I figured it just didn't matter. Decoupling is not an exact science unless a lot of measurements are taken of the device current surges.

Rick C.

Reply to
gnuarm.deletethisbit

You're a digital guy, so decoupling is about all you use caps for. Some of us have reasons to care about stuff like distortion and parametric effects due to C(V) problems. That's why film caps still exist.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

In actual measurements, I've found that the stated value of a bypass capacitor is just about its least-important property. Once you're over

100 nF or so, it's all good, as long as there's a real bulk capacitor *somewhere* in the same room.

Some fun with a TDS 694C:

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I know you can't ignore the voltage coefficient entirely -- and yes, those measurements were made at very low voltage -- but just for amusement's sake, try putting a 1 uF 16V part in your 15V circuit and measure its effect. It will probably have about 100 nF of usable capacitance... and I'll bet that makes absolutely no difference at all.

-- john, KE5FX

Reply to
John Miles, KE5FX

Is bypassing the only thing you use caps for? I'm an actual circuit designer. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

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