Bad Capacitors Make Me Smile

Burglars broke into a coworker's apartment a few years ago. They took the usual, easily-fenced items like his stereo and TV, and so forth but, in their haste, left the power cords and connecting cables.

Evidently whomever they tried to fence the goods with wouldn't accept the incomplete kit, and so the burglars returned the next day and relieved my coworker of his cords and cables.

That doesn't sound so good for your coworker too bad he didn't catch them. I could understand that used things don't sell well without the accessories. For this TV and I think many the cord is a standard type used on many laptops that I was able to find. I bought a universal remote for it also, and while not perfect does the job. Not that I shop at places that would have stolen goods but if I was to buy a working tv without the cord and remote I would expect to pay a very discounted rate. Hopefully the police recover his stuff and catch the criminals.

Never caught 'em. I can't imagine being robbed two days in a row. I think he's since had a security system installed, with cameras and a DVR. All the trappings of Justified Paranoia.

Back to finding things tossed out that are easily and simply repaired, I was riding my bike after work and spotted a very nice, late-model microwave oven sitting out on the curb for trash pick-up. I went back home, returned in my car, put it in the trunk and took it home.

The high-voltage rectifier was bad. That's all. I replaced the rectifier and had myself a brand-new microwave oven for five bucks in parts and a few minutes' effort. Not bad. Not bad at all.

It's amazing what people throw away, isn't it?

They make a thing to prevent burglar re-entry (or entry in the first place), called a shotgun. Nothing strikes more fear into the heart of a burglar than the sound of a 12 gauge shell being racked into the chamber of a pump shotgun. Heck even if anti-gun, your coworker could simply record that sound, and put it on a loop connected to a motion sensor, follow it up with a large dog barking. If it were me I would get the gun, and sit in the dark, just waiting, but I am an A type hole.

I too have to admit I love the crappy capacitors they put in high end stuff!

I have a pair of 32" NEC HD monitors on my home computer that retailed for around $3200 a piece brand new. I got them for $100 each and they took less than an hour combined to fix because both had a pair of shorted capacitors in their power supplies.

Same capacitors same location on each and about $1 a piece of I had replaced them with new ones.

I also have a 30" HD TV's in my daughters room and our master bedroom that I got for next to nothing as well because they had a bad capacitors in their power supplies.

Some time ago my father had picked up an off-brand Lcd television from Radio Shack. It lasted him a couple of months before it started blacking out on him. Since it was mounted to the wall, and he had no warranty coverage, he put up with it for a while until it was finally not worth going through the shut down- power back up process that would keep it running. After giving up on it, it sat somewhere for the longest time until I finally got around to looking at it. It turned out that there were a couple of faulty capacitors soldered into the video drive unit. The way I was able to track this down was that I noticed right before the video would black out, that there was a very high pitched squealing sound. Sure enough when I got in there to pinpoint the sound, I found 3 capacitors that were starting to bloat. In fact I think one of them even had the bottom lid completely popped out. I had to match them up as best I could (even ended up ordering higher farad rating with no consequence), and wait for them through mail order. But to this day that television is hanging on the wall seeing plenty of use.

I thought I'd post this because it might just help somebody else. And avoid having to throw out a rather expensive piece of equipment, all for the cost of a couple of new capacitors.

Well done and thanks for posting!!

I try and go up a temperature grade as well as a higher voltage (if the higher voltage ones will fit! as they are often also physically bigger for the same value), especially with Japanese electronic equipment...built for a "life".

I also replace ALL the Electrolytics, more expensive, but makes for better reliability in the end, assuming that replacing the damaged ones fixed the initial problems.

I have even added small (cheap CPU ones) fans to reduce the possibility of overheating in some units as well of all components, including hard disks, quite recently in a HD SAT receiver for example.......

Wiki had this to say about temperature and expected life with Electrolytics:-

High-quality aluminum Electrolytics (computer-grade) have better performance and life than consumer-grade parts. High temperatures and ripple currents shorten life. Typical basic Electrolytics are rated to work at temperatures up to 85 °C, and are rated for a worst-case life of about 2000 hours (a year is about 9000 hours); commonly available higher-temperature units are available for temperatures of 105 °C.

A very old friend of mine does it in quite a big way in spite of a job with a lot of traveling and little spare time....he is far better at deciding what to repair than I ever was!!!

I see you have gone "metric" with your Ohmmeter/Multimeter by the way!!!!

Have a great day.

Solid-electrolyte tantalum capacitors are preferable where cost-effective in spite of their higher prices, especially as ripple filters in switch-mode power supplies where electrolytics don't perform as well at the much higher ripple frequencies. In some cases using electrolytics for this job may in fact contribute greatly to their premature failure.

I mostly replace with what is easily available because I don't want to wait. Lucky for me we still have an electronics supply house in town so I can usually get the part I need the same day.

I changed it to multimeter, spell check must of changed it and I missed it.

When I visited my brother in U.S in 1991, he had just thrown away land line phone "Bell" brand as it had stopped working. I brought it to India just opened it and found that volume control cord had come out. I resoldered it and it started working. It is still working without any problem. We Indians are thrifty people and try to use the things to maximum stage. We would rather get any gadgets repaired at repair shops instead of just throwing it off. We have many repair shops here.

You need cheap labor for that. When a phone costs $50 new, and the shop time is $100/hr, you cannot afford the time to open the case.

I figure my labor is indeed cheap, when I am the one supplying the work. I will work for hours and hours on my home projects, including alternative energy sources, at no charge. That is cheap research.

When you could have used that time meanwhile making good money doing something else, is it really as cheap as you say? What's your time worth?

If you can't sell your spare time, or that is your recreation time, I guess it makes some sense.

(Golfing for the average person is a total waste of time and money, unless you value the recreation.)

Yes, in that context, it does, but the example was the labor rate of a hundred dollars an hour 'repairing a 50-dollar phone' versus repairing it yourself for 'free.' Unless you repair 50-dollar phones for recreation, spending hours repairing one yourself when you could have made several hundred dollars in that time doing something else is not a good use of your time. It is not 'free labor' by any means. Rather, it is lost income to the tune of several hundred dollars minus the 50-dollar cost of simply buying a new phone outright.

I agree. Being thrifty is an admirable quality, but only cheap parts and labor make that kind of 'thrifty' possible. When the labor and/or component/subassembly costs approach or surpass the cost of replacing the entire unit outright, then 'thrifty' becomes 'tossing it and buying a new one'.

I agree with you all that labor cost is very cheap here so you can get gadget repaired. To-day's labor cost is $1.00/ hr.(approx). Also cost of repair shop is also low in urban areas. Many self employed young persons manage the shop themselves all alone.

What about parts costs at one of these shops? Say, a consumer-grade 4700 uF electrolytic capacitor, 50 WVDC? What would you as a customer expect to pay at one of these shops (I just picked this part 'out of the air,' but a part that you actually paid to have replaced would be a far better example).

I would like to clarify further. $1= Rs.60(local currency) which means Rs.600/ day for 10 hrs. daily work. Per month it works our Rs.600x25=Rs.15,000/- which sufficient earning for low middle class worker in India.

Regarding prices of components, they are reasonably priced as most of the parts come from Taiwan or Korea.

"reasonably priced" as compared to what? What's 'reasonably priced' there may be considered absolutely rock-bottom dirt cheap here, as with your labor costs. If someone there charged his customers what here would be considerable a reasonable labor rate, for example, they'd run the guy out of town for trying to gouge his customers. He'd never make it. Conversely, if he charged here for his service what he charges there, he'd have plenty of work and to spare, but he'd starve to death.

A lot of our components are made in China. El Cheapo. But that capacitor, even if of Chinese make, costs a couple of dollars here - several hours' worth of labor charges there. Is that what they would charge there for this part, what we pay? I doubt it. What's reasonably priced in one place might well be considered a king's ransom in another. Reasonably priced for whom?

That amounts to $10 Canadian per day - that is 1/10th of the minimum wage for someone at the poverty line here. Your full day salary would barely buy a MacDonald's Big Mack meal here.

Absolutely. And four and a half hours' wages in Mumbai, India would buy a Coke in Sydney, Australia.

One measley Coke.

What I charged some engineering clients back east (US) *per hour* would have paid one these Mumbai bloke's salaries for *a whole month.* How can people live on one dollar an hour, anywhere? Sweet Jesus, what do they eat? Air?

I repaired a number of circuit boards (a long) while back (all the same type). Every one turned out to have the same failed electrolytic capacitor. When the circuit card was installed in the device (vertical orientation), the cap was above a large resistor, and the heat from the resistor had shortened its life.

This is something that should be considered in board layout.

I think one of the worst layouts I've seen for thermal management are Windows boxes, esp. towers. Make *everything* vertical.

To all my friends who have shown little surprise over the earning of worker in Mumbai. Please understand we live in developing country and our cost of living is low when compared with your countries. Here total house expenses for worker per month are $200/-approx. Cost of Coke here is 60 cents. Mack Burgger is priced at $2.00/-. Now please do not get upset if you have to pay higher.

The high prices are high, yes, but they don't hold a candle to our national debt: $21,000,000,000,000 as of FY 2014.

That's $66,246 owed for every man, woman and child in the U.S. Every last one

Now there's a reason to get upset. Our own government is doing more damage to this country than any terrorist could ever imagine doing without their help, by bankrupting this country, one pen stroke at a time.

I should also mention 20% of that debt was incurred *in the last year alone.* $4,000,000,000,000. Count them: twelve zeros.

No country can sustain this much debt for long, and whilst we're teetering on the brink, Washington is spending money like there's no tomorrow.

Maybe because there isn't?

Your country spends hail of money on wars in third country . Like Iraq, afghanistan etc.It is shear waste of money and debt is passed on to people.

I have noticed a falloff in the quality of electrolytic capacitors in motor start applications, which may have to do with the environmental requirements for the dielectrics.

It may be the tendency to get these parts out of China. I stick with American brands like GE (from Mexico), or Japanese.