Hoodwinked?

[pc55]

Hi folks!

First, thanks to the nice, name-brand caps I ordered from here, I now have a working, 52" Samsung LCD TV

But- the computer tech in me was curious about the 'competition.' On Ebay, there are several sellers of capacitor repair kits for this TV I have, so I ordered one such kit for comparison. The one I chose advertises this:

"We only use high quality capacitors manufactured by Panasonic, Nichicon and Rubycon in our kits. We do not use CapXon capacitors."

They also include a tiny bit of solder, some wick and some cotton swabs. They sent me 12 capacitors- was missing 1, so off to a bad start. Three different caps- the smallest were nichicons. However, the other two were...well- that is my question here. The larger one, besides the capacitance/voltage rating, only had "3919ME" on it. The other one only had the letter "M" inside a square, with some odd numbers by the capacitance/voltage rating: 16ivFV

So- before I call this Ebay Seller a liar, can someone tell me who makes these two caps? And if they are any good?

Picture is attached of both caps in question, with both sides of the second cap mentioned above shown, though one side is hard to read.

[mariushm]

Re: Hoodwinked?

That M in a square with rounded corners is the logo for Panasonic, the M is from the old name the company had: Matsushita

FM is the series, Panasonic FM:

The way the writing is on the side is consistent with Panasonic capacitors, same for the rubber bottom at least from the amount I see in the picture.

The top should have a T with the ends of the __ bent, that's the vent release system for Panasonic.

3919ME is a batch number. That also looks OK, though usually Panasonic uses a dark red paint to write that number. It's possible they're just old batches and they used that color then.

Here's a picture of genuine 1200uF 16v panasonic fm (keep in mind yours may be slightly different due to less height, so batch code could be horizontal in your case)



(click to zoom)

ps. Keep in mind that a M by itself without any squares or borders or something, is often found on capacitors and symbolizes the tolerance.. as in 1000uF +/- 20% .. M is short for 20%. There are other standardized letters for other percentages.

[pc55]

Re: Hoodwinked?

Thank you, Mariushm! This is why I wanted to check here first, so I knew whether to give this seller the thumbs up, or the heave-ho;-)

[ratdude747]

Re: Hoodwinked?

FYI, I don't suggest buying from ebay... they're cheaper for a reason. Not to mention buying from here helps keep the forum on the net. Just saying.

[pc55]

Re: Hoodwinked?

Hi ratdude747! I did buy caps from here, and will again in the future, if for no other reason than to support this site- and the price for good quality caps here seems good anyway.

That said, I am not sure I would recommend to 'not' use EBAY. There are many, many bad deals on EBAY, to be sure- but also many good deals. I have used EBAY over many years to find, for example, used computer parts, among other things- including a couple of DMMs recently. But one does have to exercise good judgement and do research- caveat emptor certainly applies- but it does in many other marketplaces as well.

And doing such research, ultimately, is win-win. If another source is unreliable or unscrupulous, they get exposed. And if not, it helps to outline what is good to look for. Also, as others do research, their Google results may bring them here because of it.

And in this case, the reason for the test- pre-made repair kits. This is very appealing to many folks, especially those who do not want to do this often, but just want to fix their failed TV or motherboard without a lot of effort. And while the Badcaps owner has kits for MoBos, he has none thus far for other devices. I myself do not mind finding and ordering the individual caps- but I hope the Badcaps owner is able to expand his kit offering- it will bring in more folks, I think.

[ben7]

Re: Hoodwinked?

Could you get us some more shots of the capacitors, including the tops (where the vent is)?

Usually fakes have somewhat OK looking plastic sleeve, but they might have wrong date codes, wrong font, wrong color, wrong vent shape, or wrong rubber seal.

[pc55]

Re: Hoodwinked?

hi Ben7- pictures are attached- from the description given by mariushm, they do appear to be Panasonic Caps- but any input is appreciated;-)

The one on the left is the larger of the two, when comparing to the original photos at the top of this thread.

[Jooo]

Re: Hoodwinked?

Those are genuine.

[PhilipsKSI]

Re: Hoodwinked?

Do you also sell caps here for the power supply failures of the Philips 19PFL series of LCD TVs?

[cheapie]

Re: Hoodwinked?

Do you also sell caps here for the power supply failures of the Philips 19PFL series of LCD TVs?

That would be better suited to another thread, but... Do you know what caps you need, or at least are looking to replace?

[mockingbird]

Re: Hoodwinked?

You have to be careful with eBay caps... If we've learned anything, it's that the chinese have the propensity to manufacture better and better counterfeits.

Having said that, why on earth would anyone buy one of these kits when you can put the kit together yourself for the same price or even at a lower price from a trusted distributor like Digikey?

I have some 16V 470uF Rubycon ZL capacitors... Some from Newark/Farnell and some from Digikey. The Newark caps were made in 2010 and the Digikey caps were made in 2012. There are obvious differences between the printing on the sleeves and the bunges between these two exact same caps with the exact same ratings from the same series but from different years/batches.

[LDSisHere]

Re: Hoodwinked?

Having said that, why on earth would anyone buy one of these kits when you can put the kit together yourself for the same price or even at a lower price from a trusted distributor like Digikey?

Before I joined this forum I bought capacitors and other electronics from Ebay. Why?
1. It is easy.
2. It is cheap.
3. Most people do not realize there is a such thing as fake capacitors nor is there more to them than voltage and capacitance.
4. They not know what a Digi-Key is and even when they do their filtering system is difficult to figure out.

I now only buy electronic parts from Ebay if I can find no other source for a particular chip that I need.

[lti]

Re: Hoodwinked?

Aside from the risk of getting crappy for fake parts, those kits sometimes don't actually include parts that commonly fail. The repair kit for my monitor (Samsung SyncMaster 731N) just includes the output filter caps for the power supply. I've never heard of anyone having bad caps in that monitor (although they are Su'scon), but there are many cases of failing buttons and voltage regulators. Replacing the caps won't fix the 1.8V regulator that outputs 1.3V (or 4V ) or the buttons that still have resistance across the contacts when they should be open. The kit doesn't even include all of the caps in that monitor.

[pc55]

Re: Hoodwinked?

These are all good points, and I recommend this site to others. That said, even mentioned within this thread is Digi-key as an alternate source, so exploring other options is not a bad thing. And kits are just easier for many to buy, so why not educate those folks as well. Not all kits will fix an issue for a given product- and not all kits are solely capacitors. I have seen some that include a mixture of components- but even those assume what the most common points of failure are. Even in Monitors, especially from a few years ago, bad capacitors were a common issue, thus the capacitor-only kits you still see. Even here, Badcaps sells capacitor-only kits for many motherboards, hitting the most common points of failure on those boards- but those kits will not fix everything that goes wrong on those boards;-)

[pc55]

Re: Hoodwinked?

One last follow-up to this thread. Two things, actually. First, so as not to leave even a minor disparagement to the Ebay Seller from whom I got this kit- I found the missing capacitor yesterday evening (well, my wife did;-)

It seems there was a small hole in the plastic bag that held the caps, and one fell out even before I opened the bag in another room. So- all caps were sent, as well as all of them being high-quality caps.

The second thing- the owner of the Ebay store frequents here and saw the post- he appreciated the fairness and discourse, and asked me to contact him about the missing cap for replacement- obviously not needed as it was found a few hours earlier. He buys his caps in bulk from Digi-key and Mouser, and his Ebay Store is LCDALTERNATIVES- one more resource to consider/recommend- along with this site, of course (which he praised and has recommended to others himself).

[theOracle]

Re: Hoodwinked?

ebay is a great source for many things, for example a new Panavise I just bought!

but in certain categories (like brand name capacitors and transistors) that have a ridiculously high counterfeiting rate, I stay away from ebay like the plague, but with a feedback rating of over 2200, I am obviously doing a lot of buying on there, just would never buy capacitors there! (and maybe a couple of dozen other things I could name)

[PhilipsKSI]

Re: Hoodwinked?

That would be better suited to another thread, but... Do you know what caps you need, or at least are looking to replace?

I started my own Philips thread here:

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...872#post389872

I'm not sure which caps but it's something on the power supply board(s). I guess I need ones that last the longest once I figure out which ones.