Turned on 24/7

[Hulk]

Can someone tell me what parts in an electric circuit (a digital mixer) get "worn" if the power is on 24/7 Caps, PSU????

 

[PRR]

> what parts in an electric circuit (a digital mixer) get "worn" if the power is on 24/7

None.

(Let's see what debate that answer stirs up.)

 

[Svart]

I also say none. There is a lightbulb in a playhouse in chicago that has been ON for 100+ years because no one has ever turned it off..

 

[SonsOfThunder]

IF there are no nasty power surges or lightening storms (I live in a small town in the middle of Oklahoma...there are a few of both of these quite often!), I say nothing will happen.

I usually leave all my studio stuff on all the time unless I know a storm is coming and then I shut 'er down and unplug from the wall.

HTH!!!!!
Charlie

 

[clintrubber]

from PRR:

None.

(Let's see what debate that answer stirs up.)

I'll bite :wink:

It's better for electrolytics, as been brought up before: they live longer when biased. Note though that a lot of electrolytics don't see much DC across them.

ICs: these are designed for a certain amount of hours. It's for instance about electromigration in the Alu-wiring: for this & that current and that amount of required lifetime you need to make that internal wire this wide.
Wider = more hours, but also a larger chip = more cost.
Note that for most internal wiring this is not critical, but where larger currents flow it can matter.


But there's certainly a benefit of less power-cycles, so it's a thing with advantages & disadvantages.
But if a lower electricity-bill can buy you a spare then the answer will be clear :wink:

Regards,

Peter

 

[Mendelt]

And tubes?

Do they age quicker when they are turned on? Or when you switch them on and off a lot?

 

[Svart]

Electronmigration is something that I've studied during my days of overclocking computer processors. You of course are NOT going to cause any wear on the wire as long as you are within the current ratings of the ICs.

I had a celery 1 366mhz running at 605 mhz and a celery 2 566mhz running at 1066.. overvoltaged and aircooled.. both are still used for servers. the 366 has been running daily for almost 6 years now.

 

[clintrubber]

And tubes?

Do they age quicker when they are turned on? Or when you switch them on and off a lot?

Apart from plain overloading (exceeding the max plate dissp.), I expect the heater is the most critical, could think of it as a lightbulb that heats up, cools down with each power-cycle. But let's await what the people with decades of of tube-experience will tell.

 

[Mendelt]

[quote author="clintrubber"]
Apart from plain overloading (exceeding the max plate dissp.), I expect the heater is the most critical, could think of it as a lightbulb that heats up, cools down with each power-cycle. But let's await what the people with decades of of tube-experience will tell.[/quote]

I can imagine more gas dissipating from the metal in the tube into the vacuum when the tube is turned on. That could make a tube age faster I guess.

 

[jensenmann]

Most equipment fails while powering up. If it´s left powered on this won´t happen. I remember long time ago having read that dbx did some investigations in that field. The result was that they didn´t use any more power switches on some equipment (166, 160X...) - saving money might have been the other reason :wink:
:sam:
Jens

 

[Flatpicker]

Considering anything I've ever owned/used, the large filter caps in the power supply were always the first to go. Other than that, I'll say heat is you enemy here. Keep the parts cool and they'll all out last each other.

 

[bcarso]

The whole history of reliability and temperature is a complex and at times comical one. Of course you may find it hard to laugh when the plane you're in is falling from the sky.

A lot of the official methodology is mostly mythical, when somebody had to satisfy the guys clamoring for it. The data were limited, and like other quasi-random processes the use of ensemble averages had to serve as the guide to projected time averages.

So we had the spectacle of chemical activation energy exponential formulae being more or less blindly pressed into service, despite the absence of evidence that this was sensible. A lot of the remnants of this persist.

PRR no doubt remembers (as I do ;-) when they said transistors would last forever because they didn't have filaments to burn out. We were told that CDs and Laser discs would last forever because there was no needle tracing grooves and abrading them.

"Give the Governor a harrumph!" (Blazing Saddles)

 

[PRR]

> when they said transistors would last forever

And when this was rebutted by tube designers, at least in audio. (The situation in switching is different, but I suspect heat and power costs drove computers and telcos to transistors at least as much as reliability.)

Well made tubes, used within ratings, do NOT die even as often as other parts. In decades of tube-foolery, I've replaced a lot more resistors and caps than tubes. Some of my tube gear has been left on for decades at a time.

I almost never assume a tube has failed. (This did bite me once: a H-P 200AB was erratic and it took me a week to admit that a heater had failed. In my defense: it was a metal tube so I could not check the glow, a 200AB runs so hot that the tube was warm even with no heater or cathode current, and the heater was good when cold, just went open when hot.)

Even in cheap TV sets, where a failed heater is a major pain (series-string means taking ALL the tubes out to a tester), heater failures were rare. Mostly we had RF, H-sweep, and HV tubes worked at/beyond ratings turn up their toes, and these can be diagnosed from symptoms.

In small tubes, gas is baked out and gettered at the factory. In regular service (24/7 or once a month), tubes stay clean or else they have a leak and are duds. One exception seems to be a tube that slept for many years may be gassy until it has been in service many hours.

In over-volted guitar amps, life is tougher and you should probably power-down when not in use.

I power-down when it would impact my electric bill, or when nobody is around to smell smoke.

As for lightning: if a lightning bolt has jumped thousands of feet down from a cloud, it will laugh at a 1/8" gap in an "open" switch. For lightning protection, pull the plug and keep it far enough away from the outlet that the bolt will find some shorter path before it finds your gear.

 

[Steve Jones]

Gear that shouldn't be left on:

Backlit LCD's.

Hard drives and motors, tape echoes.

Cheap crap that has 85 degree electrolytics in the power supply jammed beside heatsinks and power resistors.

Any rack mount unit that runs very hot and is in a rack with other equipment.

Units with electroluminecent panels.