cheap capacitors
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that is some crazy capacitor packing. I've seen that done when restoring old gear that has large obsolete capacitors, but only as a means of preserving the original look of the piece.
I worked for a couple of weeks with a well seasoned service technician, who related a story of receiving, or reading about instances of counterfeit Panasonic FM series cap.s.
I had always felt comfortable using Panasonic FM, FC, but not so much anymore.
I do not mind paying premium prices, because I know what my gear is being used for, and I'm only producing one or two pieces. But I am currently at a loss, for not only reliable parts, but also 'proven' parts that are not fake.
I have also had DigiKey send me electrolytics that were several years (not months...years) old. Now, I call them everytime I make an order for electrolytics to request date codes no more than 3 months in the past.
I worked for a couple of weeks with a well seasoned service technician, who related a story of receiving, or reading about instances of counterfeit Panasonic FM series cap.s.
I had always felt comfortable using Panasonic FM, FC, but not so much anymore.
I do not mind paying premium prices, because I know what my gear is being used for, and I'm only producing one or two pieces. But I am currently at a loss, for not only reliable parts, but also 'proven' parts that are not fake.
I have also had DigiKey send me electrolytics that were several years (not months...years) old. Now, I call them everytime I make an order for electrolytics to request date codes no more than 3 months in the past.
sahib
Well-known member
JohnRoberts said:
True. But equally nobody in the right mind excludes the return percentage from the overall cost particularly in low end consumer electronics. It is suicidal not to when now everything is made in China. You can not make a CD player that retails at £19.99 to last forever. I have already returned two of my son's portable CD players (each cost almost £200)that both developed tracking problem after about six months. Also check out the power supply leads in general whether for a consumer electronics or pro-audio. Awful. Always cheap skin-shield wire that tangles and breaks. The phone manufacturers got it right but even the expensive fancy-schmenzy gadgets like iPhone some times get it wrong. My wife's iPhone's power supply cable broke at the connector. And she is a careful user.
In terms of capacitors, none of them have infinite life anyway. Average 3000 hours on good ones. If you are running a studio for 15 hours a day (which no serious studio would have that laid back luxury-except me and I am Turkish) you have 200 days. But they still keep going for some time after that period and strictly speaking you should re-cap at least the psu of your equipment every 18 months.
I agree that science is not all that precise to calculate that a product would fall apart the day after the warranty expries, but equally the manufacturers do not care what happens after that date either. Some do. I won't mention a name (I would love to be able but some people may take advantage of it) but we bought an effect processor off e-bay which is now considered vintage. We noticed that the mains transformer was getting very hot. So we ordered a new replacement. That started to heat up too. A quick calculation revelaled that it was actually under specified. This is a pro-audio equipment. My brother complained to the manufacturer with a bit of a stiff e-mail. Their managing director phoned back. He was exteremely polite and said that while this equipment was discontinued many moons ago, he appreciated our comments from an engineering point of view and offered us one of their new models for less than the price that they give to their distributor. And we took up his offer. If he reads this post and allows me to mention their name I will happily do so. What an excellent way to run a company. But I must say this is an American company and when you guys get it right, you get it right. Here in UK you would be lucky if you could talk to their sales manager.
I had involved in low-end (otherwise known as cheap) consumer electronics and as okgb indicated a 30% return would be standard on a lot of products. Check out how on-the-edge the fine plastic parts are. You can not expect 100% to go beyond the warranty period. Particularly now when the great majority of the target customer base is youth and watch how they use equipment. Some equipment I designed/prototyped which retailed at £29.99 were actually manufactured for under four quid.
Anyhow, the bottom line is all economics. In a market where "stack them high sell them cheap" is the trend one would save a single resistor if it was possible.
Product support outside of warranty gets even more complex, and the world has changed a lot in even the several years since I last worked for a decent sized manufacturer, but we (in engineering) worked closely with service to help support product repairs many years beyond warranty support.
In the US there is a tax consequence from keeping unique repair parts in stock. These have to be carried at full value for tax purposes even if there is little likelihood of using up all these repair parts over 30 years. Old tax law allowed manufacturers to write down the repair parts inventory based on pro-rated expectations of how many might be used, but that law changed in '79 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Power_Tool_Company_v._Commissioner (note it had huge consequences for the book publishing business too.)
Some manufacturers invest in supporting products long beyond their warranty life, some don't. As consumers reward the cheaper disposable product makers, the longer term support guys will suffer and have to adjust.
For very old repair parts, sometimes there is no way for even manufacturers to buy more. In one case I had to design an adapter PCB so we could substitute a newer replacement fader for an old model console, that customers wanted to keep in service.
=====
Regarding electrolytic caps and counterfeiting, I learned more than I wanted to from dealing with a problem from a legal parts distributer who branded his own electrolytic caps, but didn't literally manufacture them.. It is not a big deal to apply the plastic skin after the fact to electrolytic caps purchased unbranded. These could be over runs from a quality cap factory, or crap from some wannabe... IMO it is worth paying a few cents more to get parts from a real company who likely manufactured them.
Counterfeiting panasonic seems like an attractive way to earn the premium difference between them and the lower end crap, but some middle man has to be complicit in the subterfuge.
JR
In the US there is a tax consequence from keeping unique repair parts in stock. These have to be carried at full value for tax purposes even if there is little likelihood of using up all these repair parts over 30 years. Old tax law allowed manufacturers to write down the repair parts inventory based on pro-rated expectations of how many might be used, but that law changed in '79 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Power_Tool_Company_v._Commissioner (note it had huge consequences for the book publishing business too.)
Some manufacturers invest in supporting products long beyond their warranty life, some don't. As consumers reward the cheaper disposable product makers, the longer term support guys will suffer and have to adjust.
For very old repair parts, sometimes there is no way for even manufacturers to buy more. In one case I had to design an adapter PCB so we could substitute a newer replacement fader for an old model console, that customers wanted to keep in service.
=====
Regarding electrolytic caps and counterfeiting, I learned more than I wanted to from dealing with a problem from a legal parts distributer who branded his own electrolytic caps, but didn't literally manufacture them.. It is not a big deal to apply the plastic skin after the fact to electrolytic caps purchased unbranded. These could be over runs from a quality cap factory, or crap from some wannabe... IMO it is worth paying a few cents more to get parts from a real company who likely manufactured them.
Counterfeiting panasonic seems like an attractive way to earn the premium difference between them and the lower end crap, but some middle man has to be complicit in the subterfuge.
JR
livingnote
Well-known member
Wow - you know, it surprises me (and doesn't) to find more and more sense in the assumption that DIY
is basically where the quality is not only happening today, but will continue to happen for...probably as
long as we live, I guess. When I just think of all the hoops and slings and arrows we had to go through
with the Q-Faktor (Stefan's probably still on the line just keeping something that high-grade alive through
the mess of it all) - really the atmosphere is completely hostile to actually building good stuff in series.
With all that has happened to studios through the web and the money cut left and right, plus many people
without too much money building analog gear, plus the incredible way of sharing knowledge here - it's
certainly likely that we're probably one of the last bastions of actually succeeding in pulling gear off like
the kind we build.
Then I hear designers talking about how they get thwarted everywhere for sounding too good with their
stuff re the product line, and now even that's clogged up. DIY is always a labor of love and invention, but
it really seems that this way in which the current and envisionable market is behaving gives it the general
backdrop of "oh and you know, these days if you wanna have something good? Gotta Do It Yourself".
It's almost like...yeah it's good fun and inspiring and brings you further to be in DIY, but...the real sting
about it comes from "because that's exactly what the world will be needing in 20 years, you just watch".
@John, yeah - I only know the most recent so here goes: After the general crisis places here in Germany
and all over where you'd get supplies (especially good ones) started disappearing, asking for cash in
advance - the component thing became a total curve ball on all fronts, they were backordering everything
because stocking of the special stuff started being out of the question, timelines went long, it was havoc
with 3-6 months attached.
Aside from that the WEEE guys told us flat on the phone that "you better reconsider bringing something
out, there's no guarantee that you might not get creamed by some funky law not even we know about,
and the system operations run on is just crazy". Right, and then RoHS to boot. Cell phones, yeah - pro
audio? You gotta be kiddin' me...
is basically where the quality is not only happening today, but will continue to happen for...probably as
long as we live, I guess. When I just think of all the hoops and slings and arrows we had to go through
with the Q-Faktor (Stefan's probably still on the line just keeping something that high-grade alive through
the mess of it all) - really the atmosphere is completely hostile to actually building good stuff in series.
With all that has happened to studios through the web and the money cut left and right, plus many people
without too much money building analog gear, plus the incredible way of sharing knowledge here - it's
certainly likely that we're probably one of the last bastions of actually succeeding in pulling gear off like
the kind we build.
Then I hear designers talking about how they get thwarted everywhere for sounding too good with their
stuff re the product line, and now even that's clogged up. DIY is always a labor of love and invention, but
it really seems that this way in which the current and envisionable market is behaving gives it the general
backdrop of "oh and you know, these days if you wanna have something good? Gotta Do It Yourself".
It's almost like...yeah it's good fun and inspiring and brings you further to be in DIY, but...the real sting
about it comes from "because that's exactly what the world will be needing in 20 years, you just watch".
@John, yeah - I only know the most recent so here goes: After the general crisis places here in Germany
and all over where you'd get supplies (especially good ones) started disappearing, asking for cash in
advance - the component thing became a total curve ball on all fronts, they were backordering everything
because stocking of the special stuff started being out of the question, timelines went long, it was havoc
with 3-6 months attached.
Aside from that the WEEE guys told us flat on the phone that "you better reconsider bringing something
out, there's no guarantee that you might not get creamed by some funky law not even we know about,
and the system operations run on is just crazy". Right, and then RoHS to boot. Cell phones, yeah - pro
audio? You gotta be kiddin' me...
livingnote
Well-known member
Oh speaking of classics here's another one:
Kingston
Well-known member
sahib said:
Whoha!
Are you sure you got this right? Only 200 days on average for a set of caps? That's less than a year. Certainly does not correlate with any of my personal experience.I know plenty of full-hours studios that have not needed even a single PSU recap for 10 years.
owel
Well-known member
The length of "life" of a capacitor depends on several factors, but primarily temperature, base life of capacitor, and DC voltage applied to it.
The "base life" is the expected/estimated time the capacitor can operate at FULL RATED VOLTAGE and MAX. TEMPERATURE.
It is specified for example as: 3,000 hrs @ 105C, or 5,000 hrs @ 85C.
So if you have a 50VDC rated capacitor, and applied the full 50VDC across it, at a core temperature of 105C, expect the capacitor to remain in spec for only 3,000 hrs. After that many hours, all bets are off.
3,000 hrs is not the lifespan of the capacitor at powered up/normal use.
Also, the end of "base life" doesn't necessarily mean the capacitor drops dead. It means the value of it's capacitance, leakage, or ESR has changed significantly from it's original factory spec.
Over the decades electrolytic capacitors have improved in almost every characteristic. AFAIk the typical life issue is losing electrolyte. If you take as many apart as I have to troubleshoot production problems you will see how low tech the fluid retention system is.. Basically a rubber puck that prevent the fluid from leaking out, but with pressure relief so if overheated it will safely release pressure before blowing up. Considering the radial caps sit with the relief valve on their bottom, and don't leak out almost immediately is remarkable.
One dynamic in cap design is to make them smaller for a given capacitance, and lower impedance (for use in switching supplies). I have seen failures associated with pushing the envelope in these areas of enhancement, I.e. caps in switching supplies that would develop a short circuit, and undersized that caps that would fail open. My one experience as a consumer with a faulty cap, was a phillips CD player, where some remarkably small and low voltage electrolytic failed open circuit after only a few years. The normal sized parts I replaced them with, are still working decades later. I have also seen obscure issues with new technology caps, where in a phantom blocking application, the new improved electrolytic, made audible leakage noise at the mic input. Stuff happens when they push the envelope too hard.
In general modern caps are way way better than the typical caps of 20 years ago.
Not to be contrary but I don't find DIY any keeper of true quality. Don't get me started on the poor build quality of kits I had to repair, when I ran my kit company. Mass market products must appeal to mass market tastes, thus pricing pressure. I learned very early on that throwing expensive parts at a design mainly makes it, more expensive not automatically better. It matters more how the parts are applied than small marginal differences between parts.
JR
One dynamic in cap design is to make them smaller for a given capacitance, and lower impedance (for use in switching supplies). I have seen failures associated with pushing the envelope in these areas of enhancement, I.e. caps in switching supplies that would develop a short circuit, and undersized that caps that would fail open. My one experience as a consumer with a faulty cap, was a phillips CD player, where some remarkably small and low voltage electrolytic failed open circuit after only a few years. The normal sized parts I replaced them with, are still working decades later. I have also seen obscure issues with new technology caps, where in a phantom blocking application, the new improved electrolytic, made audible leakage noise at the mic input. Stuff happens when they push the envelope too hard.
In general modern caps are way way better than the typical caps of 20 years ago.
Not to be contrary but I don't find DIY any keeper of true quality. Don't get me started on the poor build quality of kits I had to repair, when I ran my kit company. Mass market products must appeal to mass market tastes, thus pricing pressure. I learned very early on that throwing expensive parts at a design mainly makes it, more expensive not automatically better. It matters more how the parts are applied than small marginal differences between parts.
JR
livingnote
Well-known member
Absolutely, not that I would mean to imply that somehow magically the world is full of
people who pick up an iron and deliver superior results, or specifically that there should
be a correlation between sinking money and building good - it's just nice that when you
build stuff by hand, you have total control over what you are doing, and can really invest
time into it - finding out what exact combination really brings it in for you, careful soldering...
stuff like that.
people who pick up an iron and deliver superior results, or specifically that there should
be a correlation between sinking money and building good - it's just nice that when you
build stuff by hand, you have total control over what you are doing, and can really invest
time into it - finding out what exact combination really brings it in for you, careful soldering...
stuff like that.
Don't ignore the benefits to larger volume manufacturer's in being able to justify custom or semi-custom parts.
One obvious example is in mic preamps. The popular (IMO best) topology for low noise transformer less mic preamps involve a non-standard pot taper for best results. As a small company I had to live with the compromise of a reverse audio taper with marginal hop off performance and limited gain range (I used a 1kRA as just tolerable at hop off). At Peavey I had access to private house number parts that dramatically improved adjustability at both ends. For low gain end we went up to 25k ohm nominal. At the high gain low resistance end we used a three step resist screening overlay (stock parts use one screen pass) to get superior gain resolution down in the low ohms hop on/off region.
There are other examples, as I recall meeting with big dogs from connector and switch companies who were more than happy to tool up "whatever" we needed if the volume was right. The big IC companies also met with us regularly and asked the same questions, while at the end of every "what can we do for you" session, they just try to push whatever new designs they had on us... I don't recall one ever doing a single thing we asked for. arghhh (what would we know?). After a few years of that I stopped taking them seriously.
The irony of the pot example is the cost would be prohibitive to any low volume manufacturer, even if selling a cost no object product. We could justify the few cents more per part for the extra screen steps, but we were using hundreds of K parts a year. A lesson I draw from the IC company anecdote is that they are really driven by the pure consumer market (with some small percentage of military R&D). We were still small change to them when it comes to tooling cost for ICs.
JR
One obvious example is in mic preamps. The popular (IMO best) topology for low noise transformer less mic preamps involve a non-standard pot taper for best results. As a small company I had to live with the compromise of a reverse audio taper with marginal hop off performance and limited gain range (I used a 1kRA as just tolerable at hop off). At Peavey I had access to private house number parts that dramatically improved adjustability at both ends. For low gain end we went up to 25k ohm nominal. At the high gain low resistance end we used a three step resist screening overlay (stock parts use one screen pass) to get superior gain resolution down in the low ohms hop on/off region.
There are other examples, as I recall meeting with big dogs from connector and switch companies who were more than happy to tool up "whatever" we needed if the volume was right. The big IC companies also met with us regularly and asked the same questions, while at the end of every "what can we do for you" session, they just try to push whatever new designs they had on us... I don't recall one ever doing a single thing we asked for. arghhh (what would we know?). After a few years of that I stopped taking them seriously.
The irony of the pot example is the cost would be prohibitive to any low volume manufacturer, even if selling a cost no object product. We could justify the few cents more per part for the extra screen steps, but we were using hundreds of K parts a year. A lesson I draw from the IC company anecdote is that they are really driven by the pure consumer market (with some small percentage of military R&D). We were still small change to them when it comes to tooling cost for ICs.
JR
livingnote
Well-known member
Yeah, not to mention the exponential price behavior for end-consumers in general.
One thing I really did enjoy when designing for series was how many things suddenly
become obviously "naw that's not gonna work" you'd otherwise never even think of.
Got pretty far considering where I come from, of course not even close to yours, it
does makes me wish you could combine best of both worlds somehow...
One thing I really did enjoy when designing for series was how many things suddenly
become obviously "naw that's not gonna work" you'd otherwise never even think of.
Got pretty far considering where I come from, of course not even close to yours, it
does makes me wish you could combine best of both worlds somehow...
That's life in a tea cup.. the path less travelled is never easy.
JR
JR
livingnote
Well-known member
Oh yeah...if it weren't for all the amazing discoveries out there in the woods...
One thing that gets lost in pro/con-DIY debates is that you can mercilessly delete any "has-to-be-there" circuitry, that is required for a mass-produced box (user-friendliness, I/O protection etc.) AND solely concentrate on:
- best(estest) PSU design possible
- cleanest/shortest audio path
- no switching logic, relays, fet/cmos switches, etc.
- fattest cables (I like the ones for 220V mains, twisted)
IOW, a hot-rodded one-trick pony that does what it says, but built with components and build-style that won't get into a mass-produced "pro" gear ever.
who in their right mind would "clone" a full mass-produced gear? buy it cheap secondhand.. with warranty, if possible.
ymmv
- best(estest) PSU design possible
- cleanest/shortest audio path
- no switching logic, relays, fet/cmos switches, etc.
- fattest cables (I like the ones for 220V mains, twisted)
IOW, a hot-rodded one-trick pony that does what it says, but built with components and build-style that won't get into a mass-produced "pro" gear ever.
who in their right mind would "clone" a full mass-produced gear? buy it cheap secondhand.. with warranty, if possible.
ymmv
livingnote
Well-known member
And conversely clean up with dorky stuff like:
Yeah that with cloning by numbers is kinda pointless - cool for me in DIY is making it do
all kinds of interesting and useful stuff for your studio, changing to taste etc...the whole
"quality" issue around my PCB shop at least is just solid groundwork for people to get
creative, which happily they totally groove on.
Yeah that with cloning by numbers is kinda pointless - cool for me in DIY is making it do
all kinds of interesting and useful stuff for your studio, changing to taste etc...the whole
"quality" issue around my PCB shop at least is just solid groundwork for people to get
creative, which happily they totally groove on.
okgb
Well-known member
A good example is the chance grpbuy on the chineve's
[ if he knows the real story ]
Spec'd or not they sent a load of shit over ,
one out of 4 units i bought was usable , some had common
problems others different odd issues
there was obviously NO QC , there
[ if he knows the real story ]
Spec'd or not they sent a load of shit over ,
one out of 4 units i bought was usable , some had common
problems others different odd issues
there was obviously NO QC , there
livingnote
Well-known member
Chineve's that one's new to me - what was that?
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