Surely you are shortening the service life of those components by doing this. Just because they survive 24 hours or whatever at 4x voltage doesn't tell you everything. They might go 'pop' after a week or they might last a year. Either way, it's not good for repeat business?
We have over a century of unit time so far and no problems.
RF parts have terrible time-domain specs. The datasheets assume that the supply voltage is coupled into the drain through an inductor or a tank. So at max swing the actual drain voltage goes to 2xVcc. When the RF data sheets say "abs max" they mean the supply voltage.
And they assume (without saying so) that the signal is RF or telecom, namely AC coupled and DC balanced. 8b10b or some such.
So for pulse work, one throws away all that silly S-parameter and dBm nonsense. I have a possibly new way to bias the HMC parts for electro-optical use; park high, pulse low.
I wonder what sorts of philosophies various companies have when writing data sheet abs max specs.
Yes, especially when loud bangs and smoke are involved.
My impression is that use cases are the main driver.
Joe
Hmm. Electrolytics still give the best bang-per-buck. And the great thing is, if they're old and f***ed, they still give a great *bang* so you don't need to waste costly new parts.
Pulse testing at low duty cycle is standard practise in a low thermal capacity test environment. Semiconductors and optical devices are typical subjects.
Some longer term reliability information is extractible.
The EPCs that I tried sort of zener at drain voltages around 2x specified abs max. Short-term at least, it's not destructive.
Something weird happens to the gate if it's held above +6 or so for long. It gets leaky and the threshold changes. But it still works.
Read and comprehend.
Enough articles stored serve as as a reference, next time you wonder 'what happens if I do that?'.
RL
Test and learn. But yes, typing is easier than soldering and measuring.
For some odd reason, parts makers don't confess all the quirks and failure modes of their parts on the data sheets. Most actually hide them.
What are the quirkiest parts? Analog multiplexers?
And careful reading should be easier than either, if you can manage it.
They never emphasise them, but their lawyers usually insist that they cover them, at least in obscure foot-notes and small print. Once long data sheets became practical (after the world wide web got popular) even Texas Instruments started publishing informative data sheets, but the bad news did show up in the last pages.
Rail-to-rail op amps can be pretty odd.
It's new available parts that we want to test. Those were switching-type mosfets used in kilowatt analog modes, in NMR gradient coil drivers. We picked the best.
Most switchmode fets really don't like to see much current and much voltage simultaneously.
Lots of current at lots of volts is lots of watts being dissipated in the fet. Circuit designers generally try to avoid that.
In analog mode, you can't, and you need specialised devices that can dissipate a lot of power. John Larkin doesn't have that point of view - his "the best" is what is best at doing what he wants done.
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