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Old 1st Dec 2017, 9:53 pm   #18
Radio Wrangler
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Fife, Scotland, UK.
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Default Re: Electrolytic capacitor fails after 1 hour in service!

If you were going to fake a capacitor, you would pick a premium brand to mark on it because it would sell for more yet cost no more to make.

If you were going to fake a capacitor, you would consider putting a cheapie of the right capacitance inside, or re-marking a cheapie so that on a quick check with a capacitance meter it would show a non-suspicious value and so would get passed on further along the supply chain and wouldn't get spotted until it was too late to do anything about it. A lower voltage rating would be unlikely to be noticed until some time after the part went into its final application.

A cheapie would be cheap because of a low quality maker, and also because of a lower voltage rating I'd expect it to be somewhat smaller.

What was inside the one which blew?

Where did you get it from?

You didn't happen to buy a few at the same time, did you?

If the capacitor wasn't a fake, but was a rogue which slipped through the quality control system, then a reputable maker would be interested in diagnosing the failure.

If the capacitor was a fake, then a reputable manufacturer would be interested in inspecting it to see if there are any clues as to its source, and also for taking action against whoever supplied it.

I don't suppose it matters whose name was on the thing.

My designs use a great many 63v electrolytic capacitors, with many tens of thousands out in the field running at 40-50v and large, fast current pulses in applications where failure would certainly be noticed and reported back. So far I've seen no failures, but the supply chain is very carefully managed. The maker is not a well-known brand so maybe the risk of faking is lower.

David
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