Popped my first cherry!!! Er, Capacitor lol

[mulletchuck]

Always be careful when putting your modules back into your 51X rack, if they're designed for 500-series!!!

 

[JohnRoberts]

Yawn... those caps are designed to release internal pressure relatively gracefully with ribber puck in end of metal tube (while they can make a mess from leaking electrolyte).

I recall back in the late 60's I blew up a good sized metalized film cap trying to absorb voltage spikes across a transformer winding in a pre-historic switching PS I was tech on. Luckily for me I was away from my bench and across the room when it let go... It disintegrated into thousands of tiny pieces of foil, looked a little like it snowed on my bench. 

JR

 

[pucho812]

came into the shop like this. Now that is a blown cap.

 

[zayance]

So they do pop up like soda cans    :-\ 8) 

 

[Kingston]

Few days a go I found a particularly nasty popper. A cheap chinese tivoliaudio radio knock off was broken and I wanted to see why. They had designed in a self destruct timer: A big PSU elco right next to a linear regulator cooling block.  Guess which elco was dead. The message to the consumer is this one goes to landfill and you buy a new one. And that this is just the way of things and electronic products don't last forever...

 

[mulletchuck]

pucho, how did you blow those caps that connect right to the PSU rails??

Kingston, that's crazy!

 

[pucho812]

pucho, how did you blow those caps that connect right to the PSU rails??

Kingston, that's crazy!

I don't know as two units came came in that way. I can only suspect. I suspect that this 15 pin 500 series  mic pre was plugged into a 51x frame that the client has. If he was not careful when connecting it in he might have had the wrong voltages. I also suspect that if had it in a proper 500 series rack that he hot plugged it, Although they are designed for that it's not the best idea. I cannot otherwise figure it out as the caps were put in with the correct polarity and the units came in that way.  Outside of that one of the units with a blown cap also had a dead 2520 so that might have been a cause as well but again I do know for sure as I was not there when it happened.
electrolytic caps usually blow one of 2 ways. Going in backwards(reverse of their polarity markings) or if you feed them more voltage then they are max rated for. 

Anyway replaced the caps  on both and one worked fine the second one did not until I replaced the dead 2520. I can suspect that he tried the dead opamp in two units which would part explain two identical caps failing in the same manor, location, etc... on two different units of the same model. But that is all guess. As a repair tech you fix it and run it and if it doesn't fail while in the shop and works as it is supposed to, then there is not much else to say other then it's fixed.