On Wednesday, August 24, 2016 at 12:21:56 AM UTC-7, Jeff Walton wrote: > > >During the life of the clock, there were a couple failures of the caps in > the voltage doubler >
When your cap(s) failed, was it catastrophic ? I've only had 1 electrolytic fail in recent history, and it was a low-voltage cap that dried-out and shorted at medium-resistance in a Heathkit device (not a clock). No smoke, etc. I've tried to prevent/mitigate cap failures in my designs by using the smallest possible fuse, keeping the caps away from any heat, staying well below the rms/ripple current spec, and using a higher voltage rating than necessary (eg 450v cap running at 340VDC). Recently, I found caps designed for solar-energy applications (TDK Epcos) that boast 85C operation for 10,000 hours, so I use them now. Most electrolytics are rated for 2000 hours. That doesn't mean the caps will fail (ie, explode) in 2000 hours; they just wont be within spec (capacitance out-of-spec, but otherwise functional). Electrolytics are a strange beast compared to other components. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/66df0632-699e-4d44-866b-a9c52e1fc701%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
