Most and Least Reliable Electrolytic Capacitors

[restorer-john]

They were Elna replaced with equivalent Nichicon or vice versa, well major brand anyway cant remember - no doubt @restorer-john could identify.

That photo shows Elna. The Elna cerafines are the gold and red ones on the left. The deep red small ones to the left of that are Elna Duorex or Duorex II or possibly Elna Starget.

 

[March Audio]

Its the psu ones on the right that were changed. I don't know if that picture was pre or post replacement.

The ipod in the background dates it

 

[TimF]

Another major PITA for me was the PSU caps in my tag Mclaren AV32RDP. Started failing to boot the DSP section. Turned out to be the PSU caps and a common problem.

They were Elna replaced with equivalent Nichicon or vice versa, well major brand anyway cant remember - no doubt @restorer-john could identify.

Bottom line it was bad design, all the caps were running too hot crammed around the psu heatsinks.

View attachment 89646

Audiolab and Tag Mclaren are the same shop, aren't they?

 

[March Audio]

Audiolab and Tag Mclaren are the same shop, aren't they?

So Tag McLaren bought the Audiolab company in 1998. They revamped and made some design changes to the Audiolab range and developed new products such as the AVR above, matching amps and speakers.

Sadly the company was dissolved in about 2004 due to the economic slump and sold to IAG who operate a wide range of audio companies such as Mission, quad etc. They started using the old Audiolab name.

 

[Spilly44]

LCR caps.
Well not their fault.Musical fidelity using 80v caps when amp has a 78v line voltage.

 

[audio2design]

The probably with many of the Asian capacitors, and I mean the real ones, as they get cloned too, is that designers often treat all capacitors of the same value/package the same when obviously they are not. When the designer does not consider ripple current, and/or uses generic equations for life, without giving considerations to the specific capacitor, that is where the problems usually arise.


Man Yue (Samxon)
Capxon
Aihua (Aishi)
Beryl
Sam Young (Korea very good, China not as good)


Can make very reliable capacitors if used within and considering their design limits. I can't say I have had experience with Lelon.

Part of the problem will be prototypes with Japanese capacitors that is then costed down for manufacturing in China without sufficient due diligence on specifications.


w.r.t. Capacitors near heat sinks, that is usually a matter of packaging when using an off the shelf supply. You do want to keep traces short for performance and EMI, but you would prefer the capacitors not jammed against the heat sink. Of course, it also comes down to how the product is specified. If you use the off the shelf power supply with adequate air flow, the life may be quite good, but put in a box with limited air flow and then sit it on top of a hot amplifier was likely not as the original supplier of the power supply intended.

 

[Michael YYZ]

What about JunFu capacitors by North Latitude Electronic Co., Ltd. of Taiwan? Any feedback about their quality?

I’ve got a ten-year old Rhytmik subwoofer with an A370PEQ2 plate amplifier, which recently developed a slight 60 Hz humming noise (even with the signal cable unplugged). The PS filtering capacitors are 4x 6,800uF @100V and 85degC. They are type LP by JunFu and measure 30x65 mm. One of the capacitors has a slight bump at the top (slightly swollen), but all measure ‘within’ specs: 5,860uF (or -14% but the specs are +/-20%) and a Dissipation Factor or 0.23 (0.20 in the spec).

I’m planning to replace them with SLPX682M100H9P3 by Cornell Dubilier Electronics (CDE), which I hear makes good capacitors. It is 35x50mm and I am not sure if I could fit them on the board - the capacitors are grouped in pairs on the board and the c/c distance between the holes is only 32.5mm. The problem is I could not find - on either Digi-Key or Mouser - capacitors of this rating that are 30mm in diameter, like the original JunFu ones.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

 

[gattaca]

JunFu is in the bottom tier of Tom's ranking.... All the ones you listed are above it. I found about 8-10 with this search on Digikey which is close but I did not filter on everything. You can winnow more with the 85C/105C thermals, hourly ratings and sizes. All of these are "in-stock" per the selections. You can use the higher rated thermals and longer hours without issue. Keep the voltages and the uF the same or ever so slightly higher if you find a part that meets the specs - never lower for those.

https://www.digikey.com/en/products...aoEgmtrhkTHxiSlpViAAtHBZjgZJrgWUSKoVwSCWFhZAA

Tom's (2015) tier listing is below. I know there are a few other ASR members (@restorer-john ) who can better advise based on their years of extensive experience replacing caps and the brands. Hopefully, they will chime in soon-enough!

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-supplies-101,4193-5.html

I personally like Nichicon, Panasonic, Nippon, Kemet and Vishay when I can find them and when I see these in components, I know they dropped a bit extra on the builds. Note: Cornell Dubilier(USA) in the top tier after the commenter pointed out the US brands.

Any of these would surpass what you are replacing. Pay attention the thermals and lifetime ratings and if they are near hot components, increasing the thermal rating will increase the life. Be absolutely sure you know what you are doing WRT to voltages, discharges, orientation (mark it for sure and do not trust the boards) other repair items. Stay safe, stay alive. Peace.

 

[Wes]

What's the story on Infini-Caps?

 

[kipman725]

CapXon, Teapo and Samwha very bad from my experience. Failures within a few years and in the Samwha case failiure in a peice of equipment that wasn't even turned on (IE failed when stored). Also had SMD Panasonic failures but after ~18years and relativly high temp usage so they would be meeting their lifetime specs.

 

[H-713]

Panasonic and Rubycon are my preferred choice. I've had a few issues with Nichicon caps that make me nervous about them- could have been a bad batch though.

One brand that I have had very bad luck with is SURGE. The old Crest amps are full of them and they're a real sore spot. I've sometimes taken the THD of an old Crest amp from .05% down to .009% just by recapping it with decent quality Panasonic caps.

 

[JSmith]

I think these are the worst ever capacitors;



https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/2yd3ea
Caveat emptor!



JSmith

 

[H-713]

It should go without saying that caps should be purchased from a reputable vendor like DigiKey.

 

[gattaca]

And even then still verify with sampling. I had the president of an electronics manufacturing firm tell me just 2 years ago, they QC verified the start, middle and end of their component reels b/c they had seen the start of the reel be dead-on but nearer the end... not. So even the best suppliers sometimes get duped or maybe binned lower...

 

[chris719]

And even then still verify with sampling. I had the president of an electronics manufacturing firm tell me just 2 years ago, they QC verified the start, middle and end of their component reels b/c they had seen the start of the reel be dead-on but nearer the end... not. So even the best suppliers sometimes get duped or maybe binned lower...

You can be confident in what you buy from Digi-Key, Avnet, Mouser, etc. since they are authorized and get product directly. You don’t really need to check. Electronics manufacturers often buy in bulk from other distributors and gray market channels which is where this shows up.

I’ve had to buy gray market FPGAs at work for $1500 each because Intel had a 26 week lead time and we couldn’t wait. We bought 20 from some random guy in Israel and they were legit, but there was a lot of back and forth because the Intel rep couldn’t even understand why the markings on the package were different than normal.

 

[Maki]

Arced an EPCOS TDK capacitor 4 different times and it didn't break a sweat. Blew up a PCB trace though. For poly caps I use WIMA, other electrolytics Nichicon and they've also been 100% reliable in the few amplifiers I've built/recapped.

 

[H-713]

I'll be honest, I don't necessarily think that Nichicon caps are bad. I'm sure they're excellent quality. I've had a couple of bad experiences with them, so they tend not to be my first choice when purchasing. Maybe I got old stock, maybe they were internally damaged when I got them, maybe there was a bad batch- I don't know. Enough people have had good experiences with them that I'm inclined to say I got unlucky, but having multiple 22,000 uF 100V caps explode enough to make me a little gun-shy about them.

At any rate, United Chemi-Con and Rubycon caps are about the same price and available from most of the same distributors anyway, so it's not like it's any extra trouble.

 

[dfuller]

Well, here's some more anecdotal evidence for IC LBAs being junk and Nichicons being good... I got in a 23 year old Peavey Ultra Plus guitar amp for servicing today. First stage filter caps? Nichicon LQs, 2000hr at 85C bulk caps. No hum, no sawtooth on the plate connections for the power tubes... I've seen amps half its age with IC LBA's (also 2000hr at 85C rated) in the same spots that died a horrible death. This could be that the LQs are 400V parts instead of 350V like the IC LBAs though...

 

[Plcamp]

I recently went through decision process on this for power amp bulk caps, ended up picking TDK/EPCOS because they (with slight modification) fit, they have very high ripple current rating and lowest esr of the eligible candidates.

But I believe the lifetime of electrolytics is determined primarily by the physical design of the product (ambient temperature it really operates at), and whether or not the application’s current self heats the cap (designer).

In many old integrated amps and receivers it is common to see high ripple current caps buried in a tightly packed bunch with rectifiers and magnetics Sometimes other components strapped or glued to the caps. That’s going to limit reliability for any capacitor choice. Some good news is that better rated replacements are often smaller, so the cooling is improved with replacements.

 

[Audiofire]

Just looking at the quality of technical documents from manufacturers for my recapping projects tells me that Nichicon, Nippon Chemi-Con, ELNA, TDK, Cornell Dubilier and Vishay are the best for my needs.

Edit: And industrial-grade Panasonic caps.