The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

[Cartel]

just something I seen thats a bit alarming but not surprising....and 450v?
https://youtu.be/WhqKYatHW2E?t=461

[Cartel]

does ebay by the 1000s change the factor?

[RukyCon]

I would say possibly real, iirc, Nichicon manufactured capacitors for Sprague. Nichicon were also using resin bungs around that era, as I had a few from 1995 or so that had resin bungs, but I had to get rid of them as they started leaking down their legs.

[Cartel]

brand new "sprague" 517 with 1991 date codes and phenolic bung....fake?

[Uranium-235]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

From a classic gaming group on facebook. Asus TUV4X. Sanyo caps though. I'm guessing bad PSU

[Ritchie_Uk]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

We used to blow them up for fun at college, and they smelt like stinky fish
Back in the good old days where nobody gets offended or sued you

[Mortymore]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

This RIFA caps are well known for failure over time.
This one has blown with not much noise, but some amount of smoke and a terrible smell.
It came from the PSU board of a Tektronix 2445 oscilloscope.

[RukyCon]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

Forgot to mention, The controller only saw about 30 minutes of service before it died. I also just noticed there's a layer of Kapton tape between the MOSFETs and their heatsink, the MOSFETs themselves are all Skysilicon SKD502T parts, rated at 85v, 120A max current. I also noticed that the 5v auxiliary supply appears to be based around a standard two transistor design, even going as far as to use a MJE13003 as the main switching transistor. And the main controller chip seems to be a programmable microcontroller, which basically means if it's fried then there's probably no chance of repairing this thing.

I've also attached some more photos, this time focusing more on the corrosion caused by the capacitor electrolyte.

Edit: just spotted some signs of overheating around a couple MOSFETs, including melted solder both on the board and in the case.

[RukyCon]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

Brand new 48v 1800w BLDC motor driver killed by undersized/poorly made capacitors.




Brand: SLF
Series: BT
Sizes: 470uf 63v, 47uf 63v.
Total number of failed capacitors: 4

All four capacitors are located across the supply lines, and thus shouldn't experience a lot of stress, meaning either the heat killed them ( as the driver did get hot as hell after 10 minutes of use), though this doesn't explain why every other capacitor on the board was left untouched, which leads me to believe that the capacitors overstated their voltage rating, which doesn't seem unlikely, as other companies have done that before. But As a result of the failure, at least four or more MOSFETS have been blown, not sure if it's damaged the motor, but doing a continuity test on it shows really low resistance on all three windings.

Some additional details:

The electrolyte from the capacitors managed to pool up in one corner of the board, causing corrosion in that corner, the electrolyte was also still wet upon taking apart the controller housing, Even managed to spill a bit on my shirt while taking it apart. Before I do much else with it, I'm going to contact the seller of the kit to see if I can get a replacement or refund for the blown controller. And then I may try to repair this one assuming I'm not required to send it back for replacement.

[Behemot]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

too lazy to take pics, but it never ceases to amaze me what could get screwed by using bad caps…I'm in the process of refurbishing ceiling lights with radar-based sensor, all together with E27 socket put into single (removable, held via 4 screws) plastic module in those lights

in pretty much all of them (25 units), some of two 100/16 and single 22/25 caps are bad, quite often all three of them, often having ESR as high as 150 ohms; all three are GP parts, sometimes rated just 85 °C, but even 105 °C, they all get bad after like 4-5 years of use

in about half of those lights, also the main film cap (0,56 uF, ordinary non safety cap), lowering the voltage from mains via its impedance, is totaly bad, or out of spec at least (yet still working), replacing that is kinda more complicated as many of the X-rated caps are too big to get there (and even those which are not too big, are still a pain to squeeze there)

symptom? besides those totaly dead lights, absolute majority is either on 24/7, or at least during the whole night, they simly never stop holding the relay, which not only burns thousands on electricity a year, but also all those magnificient LED replacements die one after another, working all the time, with either their circuits, or the LEDs themselves, burning like crazy (when they get SO hot), so where's all that environment-friendliness we all hear about? I'll tell ya, that's all BULLSHIT; ordinary incadescent bulbs do about the same life running all the time and I am not really sure, if 40W bulb could even burn as much in electricity over 8W LED which on the other hand costs at least five times as much in stores

[Dan81]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

NGL those su'scon caps be looking a bit sus.

That's about the first time I've heard that pun, ever since amogus came to exist

[Macroman]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

NGL those su'scon caps be looking a bit sus.

Yep..a little bit..

[TechGeek]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

NGL those su'scon caps be looking a bit sus.

[RukyCon]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

NGL those su'scon caps be looking a bit sus.

[Macroman]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

I think I found the reason my Vizio TV is cycling on and off and it has a buzzing in the speakers even when muted...

[kevin!]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

The blown Nichicon caps are HD series.

True, because of the upper stain I had a hard time seeing it, thanks.

[PeteS in CA]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

The blown Nichicon caps are HD series.

[kevin!]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

Last Sunday 2 Nichicon (I don't know the series, it has a strange numbering) passed away after 58,000 hours of service, I turned off the monitor of my server to make some changes, and it never turned on again, I replaced it with 2 nichicon of a old broken MSI board, and it's back to life.
I hope I can finish my CCFL tube lifespan experiment, it's still bright enough for the hours it's been working.

[TH1813254617]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

Old Elite PW 450v 120uf serving as a primary cap in my old Dell 2407. There is some leakage and corrosion on the positive terminal, seemingly a rather common failure on this model of monitor. As is well-documented on this forum, the terminal will eventually get eaten through and cause a bunch of components to blow up. Fortunately, my monitor was still functional when I found the bad cap. Otherwise, I would have had to replace a LOT more components!






All of the other caps (Elite ES, Elite EJ, TAICON HD, Lelon RGA, FOAI CD112A) seemed fine.

[andrewsawesomr]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

I was repairing this Sony balalaika and found three faulty ones (short circuit!!!) capacitor , I do not know this manufacturer.

Here you go... http://www.chinafoai.com/epgt.htm