Reommended electrolytic capacitor kits? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / repair

author: Esposch T. Tapir
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2015, 12:59:27 am
content: As title suggests, after a good quality kit containing a whole lot of different capacitors. Just want something to keep around the house for repairs.Anyone know of a place that does a good one?Bought one from DX years ago and used a couple of the caps to fix a monitor today.It turned on fine, but the caps are singing!Serves me right for buying cheap junk, I suppose.Thanks,~Chris

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 09, 2015, 05:48:38 am
content: Don't buy capacitors from DX, ebay, Aliexpress... Better to just order various values instead of the kit. Anyway there is not so many values compared to, for example, resistors, so it would be worthy to buy a kit.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 09, 2015, 05:49:35 am
content: Quote from: Esposch T. Tapir on April 09, 2015, 12:59:27 amThose monitors will fail again soon.

author: retiredcaps
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2015, 06:04:46 am
content: Quote from: Esposch T. Tapir on April 09, 2015, 12:59:27 amI bought capacitors from DX knowing they were fake, but wanted to see first hand how bad it was. The Sanyo capacitors arrived with the wrong bung and vents. I do use them in non critical projects or repairs.For anything worth repairing, I order either Nichicon, Rubycon, United Chemicon or Panasonic from large big name distributors like mouser, digikey, etc.

author: pickle9000
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2015, 06:44:42 am
content: My philosophy is to basically not use. Having said that if you looked in the cap box you's find a set of Chong. Yes they are super cheap, not counterfeit (who'd bother?), and used until I can get a good one.

author: Esposch T. Tapir
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2015, 07:02:05 am
content: QuoteHaha, yeah. Shame about that. Basically turned it on, looked at the beautiful screen, the turned it off again before anything went boom.Quote from: retiredcaps on April 09, 2015, 06:04:46 amThanks, will pick up a big box of them next time I make an order from Element14. Gotta get that free postage.

author: Tim F
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2015, 07:56:58 am
content: I would advise against stockpiling electrolytic caps in the hope of using them for repairs. There are just too many combinations of voltage, capacitance and physical dimensions for you to have the right capacitor for every repair on hand unless you are repairing the same type of thing over and over again. With a limited selection on hand and limited space you'll either be putting in a smaller cap with inferior ripple current rating to what came out, or putting in a smaller capacitance to get it to fit.For breadboarding/prototyping I just go to my favourite supplier and browse the low ESR series from the aforementioned manufacturers. I usually keep a handful of 10-1000uF low ESR electros for breadboarding.My go-to are 100uF, 50V Panasonic FM which are good enough that you can usually whack them on a breadboard and not even need 0.1uF ceramic decoupling caps. Panasonic FC and Nichicon PM(M)/PW(M) are also excellent.

author: Klondike Mike
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: March 09, 2022, 05:47:16 am
content: Stumbled upon this old post and thought I would add. I offer kits for many vintage 2 way radios (HAM,CB), receivers (HF,SW) and scanners. Hope you find something you like;www.klondikemikescapkits.com

author: Wallace Gasiewicz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 11, 2022, 03:43:12 pm
content: Years ago I bought a electrolyte kit from Fry's. (gone)Not high volts. Some were 50 V.It stated "Made In Germany". As I recall.All the caps worked well and am still using the remainder.