Capacitor Value Question

It's a 60,000 uF electrolytic, but it's so old that I can't decipher all of the numbers to get the voltage rating. It's likely to be a special unit, so the numbers are only meaningful to the OEM.

Unless someone else has an old Sprague catalog to determine the voltage rating, you'll have to use a little common sense. Remove the bad capacitor and temporarily wire in a high voltage capacitor of a few hundred uF and measure the voltage developed across it. Add a safety factor of about 20-30% of that voltage.

You probably won't find that exact capacitance in a new capacitor, so use something close... like 62,000 uF, which is more likely to be a standard value.

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Dave M
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The Siemens coding system was

With a long series of digits and letters where there was a sequence of 4 digits, the middle 2 represent the 2 leading digits of the capacitance value and the fourth the indicial multiplier in pF ('8' -> 10^8 pF) so perhaps 32 x 10^8 pF or 3200 uF A1 would be a type number

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The 53D series belonged to Sprague originally, currently, through acquisition, belongs to Vishay. You indicate that the cap might be a Siemens unit.

It would surely help if the OP come back and indicate the manufacturer of the capacitor.

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Dave M
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There's no mfr. name printed on it; the cap is blue with three "+" symbols marking the positive side.

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:08:55 -0700, "Chris F." put finger to keyboard and composed:

Following on from what DaveM has said, here is the datasheet for the Vishay Sprague 53D series:

"Vishay Sprague 53D series is a general purpose capacitor with a rugged construction and the largest CV ratings in axial leaded capacitors. These axial leaded aluminum capacitors feature a rated capacitance range of 15 µF to 220,000 µF, and an operating temperature range from - 40 °C to 85 °C."

Rated voltage range, UR 6.3 WVDC to 450 WVDC

Unfortunately the datasheet doesn't show a 60,000uF cap. The largest is 11,000uF. Furthermore, the capacitor markings only appear to make sense for the first line.

Judging by your dimensions, if by "wide" you mean "long", and by "thick" you mean "in diameter", then a 60,000uF cap in the 53D series would be much longer than 2", I would think.

For example, a 3800uF 50V cap is 2.14" long and 1.01" in diameter. What voltage could you expect of a 60,000uF cap of the same size?

- Franc Zabkar

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Franc, Sprague didn't use the three digit code to identify yhre capacitance. It identified the part numer in the series. Someone on the antiquie radio nesgroups or forums may have an old catalog. I can't find mine right now. I can barely see at all, and am not epxpected to recover, for several months.

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Totally valid arguments and I agree with you after being reminded that the OP had given the dimensions of the cap as 2x1 inches. I overlooked that aspect after my first read of his post.

The lack of any numbers after the first line (53D603) threw me at first, but I remembered that Sprague used to make the 53D line. I just figured that the OP had an old unit and used a capacitor value that had been obsoleted.

Cheers!!

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"Chris F." wrote in news:4888c5e7$0$4003$ snipped-for-privacy@news.aliant.net:

A picture might help.

If it is Sprague, their 'trademark' is a '2' with a circle around it. Called the 'circle duce', it stands for 'second to none'.

I used to design and build monolithic capacitors and resistors for Sprague in the late 60's and early 70's.

As far as I know, we never made anything over a few dozen uF at our plant in Wichita Falls, tx.

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I forgot to mention that the customer had brought in two of these units, one being a bit newer than the other. The other unit happened to be in working order, so I opened it up and found a similar design with another strangely-marked cap. But since it was working, all I had to do was measure the operating voltage and capacitance. The voltage across it was about

320VDC, and the capacitance was just 1.18uF. This cap, unlike the one in the other unit, appeared to be a non-polarized metal-film type. So I installed a 2.2uF, 400V metal-film cap (the closest thing I could find) in the other unit and it appears to work. Both units create a good thick spark of about

On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:12:40 -0700, "Chris F." put finger to keyboard and composed:

If the capacitor forms part of a tuned circuit, then doubling its value may change the resonant frequency and peak voltage in this circuit. Unless you've already done so, I would confirm that the voltage across the replacement cap does not exceed its rating.

However, if the design of your electric fence controller is anything like my Silicon Chip kit, then it works by charging a dump capacitor and then discharging its stored energy into the fence. The April 1999 kit uses a 7uF 250VAC capacitor which develops a DC voltage of 340V across it. This amounts to a stored energy of ...

E = 0.5 x C x V^2 = 0.40 joules

If yours is a dump cap, then doubling its capacitance would double the controller's energy output. I'd make sure you are not contravening any local safety regulations by doing so. Having said that, it would still appear that your controller puts out less than one third of the energy that my kit does.

- Franc Zabkar

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Possibly best to use a pulse (typically polypropylene) type cap in such a unit.

Graham