novice question

hi all, i'm building a small electronics project which was bought in kit form... bear with me i'm a beginner ;) everything is soldered onto the board except for a few components i'm not sure about... there are places on the board left for 4x 1microF capacitors (the tiny ones which aren't polarity sensitive- not sure the proper name!) i have 4x capacitors with just the number "105" on them left over- do you think they have sent the wrong capacitors or is "105" actually a 1microF capacitor?

there are also 9 places on the board left for 9x 100nF capacitors... i have

9x capacitors with the number "104" left over - are these the wrong ones?

many thanks!! andy

Reply to
Andy C
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"Andy C" wrote in news:qCjHh.14168$ snipped-for-privacy@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk:

*snip*

Capacitors are labeled funny. (To me, at least.) What I usually do is search for "104 capacitor" via Google, and often I get a page with the value of the capacitor. If you're doing a lot of work with capacitors, you'll want to learn the codes. If it's just a "now and then" thing, there's no need.

Puckdropper

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Wise is the man who attempts to answer his question before asking it.

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Reply to
Puckdropper

Yes, the 105 means a 10 followed by 5 zeroes or 1,000,000pF (pico-Farads) which is exactly equal to 1uF (micro-Farad), or even 1,000nF (nano-Farads)

Those are the correct caps. 104 is 10 followed by 4 zeroes or 100,000pF which is the same has 100nF and .1uF. Does that help?

In descending order it goes Farads(F), mill-Farads(mF), micro-Farads(uF), nano-Farads(nF), and pico-Farads(pF).

Reply to
Anthony Fremont

Hi, Andy. You're doing fine -- your caps marked 105 are 1uF, and the

104s are 0.1uF or 100nF caps. You can complete your kit with the parts you have.

This is a common newbie question. For many good answers to your question, go to Google Groups s.e.b. and search in that group for the phrase capacitor codes (no quotes).

Congratulations on getting the parts right. That's not the easiest thing for a newbie. Hope everything works OK. If not, feel free to post again -- be sure to mention the kit manufacturer and kit number

-- it helps.

Cheers Chris

Reply to
Chris

thank you! don't know why i didn't think of that !!

Reply to
Andy C

Ceramic capacitors are often marked with their values in picofarads, using a three digit code: two digits plus a multiplier.

Your "105" capacitor is 1, 0, 00000 pF, or 1,000,000 pF which equals 1 uF. the "104" parts are 0.1 uF or 100 nF or 100,000 pF.

--
Peter Bennett, VE7CEI  Vancouver BC, Canada
peterbb4 (at) interchange.ubc.ca  
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Reply to
Peter Bennett

Use of milli-Farads can be confusing and/or hazardous.

In ancient times, before the Greek alphabet was invented, we used "mF" or "MF" to mean microfarad (and mmf for micro-micro farad, now called picofarad), so using mF for millifarad will confuse many older techs, and mislead newer techs looking at old schematics.

--
Peter Bennett, VE7CEI  Vancouver BC, Canada
peterbb4 (at) interchange.ubc.ca  
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Reply to
Peter Bennett

You're right, and I just saw a schematic using mF for uF, why oh why.

Reply to
Anthony Fremont

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Have a look at Fig. 2 and Fig. 3. As you can see it all looks very simple. If a capacitor is marked like this 105, it just means 10+5 zeros = 10 +

00000 = 1.000.000pF = 1000 nF = 1 µF. And that's exactly the way you write it too. Value is in pF (PicoFarads). The letters added to the value is the tolerance and in some cases a second letter is the temperature coefficient mostly only used in military applications, so basically industrial stuff.
Reply to
Homer J Simpson

Those are the right caps. The numbers are just the standard color code printed in numbers instead of colors. So, for the 105, that's one '1', one '0', and five more '0's, or 1,000,000 pf, which is 1 uF. Same with the 104: 1 0 0000, which is 100 nf == 0.1 uF == 100,000 pf.

You might try googling on "color code" or "resistor color code".

Have Fun! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

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