Bad caps documentary - very good  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: flipper
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2024, 04:57:00 am
content: Nothing new to us, and a good watch:

author: tigrr
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2024, 10:46:20 pm
content: SamsungandLGhave the highest percentage of failed capacitors. It's a bit disappointing...

author: richnormand
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 02, 2024, 07:54:26 pm
content: Interesting. Nothing really new but more people should be aware.An interview with Rossmann would have been appropriate in addition to Ifixit.Over 20 years ago when I was travelling a lot I noticed many airports using the Viera Panasonic plasma for 24/7 flight display.I got one for home and it still works. It was not the cheapest but you can make a product last if you want to.Also, in the documentary, you can see a list of defective TVs and the capacitors but no failure in the Panasonic/Sony/.. column.A month ago I replaced the battery in my son's Surface. I now understand the (very) low repairability score from Ifixit now.Planned obsolescence indeed.

author: EPAIII
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 10:47:30 am
content: There is nothing new about electrolytic capacitors failing. I spent over 45 years at TV stations and related places like production companies repairing not just TVs, but all types of equipment, even digital before the public had even heard that word. And of all the components that I replaced electrolytic capacitors were near the top of the list if not at the top.Please notice that I inserted the word "electrolytic" into that statement. Other types of capacitors have a much, much lower failure rate. In that 45+ years of replacing defective components I don't think I came across even a single film capacitor that had failed. I would say the same about ceramic disc capacitors but there I did have one that failed. But just ONE in 45 years. And it had an intermittent short. Since it was in a low Voltage circuit and over-rated by at least a factor of 5X, I suspect it was a rare, factory defect and not some kind of slow, constant deterioration. No, all the other types of capacitors combined don't even come to 1% of the number of electrolytics that I have replaced. So you can't say that capacitors in general fail a lot. That honor goes only to electrolytics.Individual transistors were used a lot in that equipment. I have seen individual devices that had at least 500 2N3904s in them. Some may have had 1000 or more. Transistors are probably second on my personal list of replacements. More than electrolytic capacitors? Probably not but I did replace a lot. Transistors can and do deteriorate from the same things that can attack electrolytic capacitors. And heat is at the top of that list.Inductors (coils) also have a very low failure rate. They don't slowly deteriorate: they usually fail from a current spike that vaporizes the weakest point in the wire they are wound with. Or, less often, they can have an internal short. But both of these are very rare events.So why do electrolytic capacitors fail so often? Why do they deteriorate? And why on earth do designers still use them when there are other types of capacitor that will last almost to forever? I will tackle the last question first. The answer is simple; it is the capacitance and Voltage ratings that are available in each type. In order to have a film capacitor as large as an aluminum electrolytic the size of my little finger, that film capacitor would need to be as big as a house and would probably cost as much as ten luxury homes. The capacitance of a capacitor is directly proportional to the area of the plates and inversely proportional to their separation. Yea, I know everyone here already knows that. So when larger values of capacitance and higher Voltage ratings are needed, the electrolytic type capacitor really shines. I mean it is like a super-nova compared to a dying star at the end of it's life. And the other side of the engineering here is the cost vs performance trade-off. Micro Farad for micro Farad, ceramic or film capacitors are easily 10,000 times more expensive than electrolytics. At that rate for parts that are present in ten or more in them, things like the cell phone which we all carry around every day would only be affordable by the richest of the rich. You and I would simply be out in the cold.But in engineering circles it is well known that every thing is a compromise. The famous saying is,"I can make it fast.I can make it cheap.I can make it well.PICK ANY TWO!"And that is the truth, you only get to pick TWO, not all three.Electric capacitors are made fast and cheap. They must be cheap for otherwise there would be no need to even make them because no one could afford them.Planned obsolescence? NO!Planned affordability! YES!And it is such a fundamental and obvious engineering choice that no one who designs electronic devices would spend even a single micro-second thinking it over. So, like it or lump it, that's it.Now, could electrolytic capacitors be made better? To last longer? Of course they could. But you are back to that fast-cheap-well thing again. And yes, they probably do last for the average lifetime of the devices they are used in. And if you do want your devices to last twice as long, find someone who knows how to replace them when they fail. I have personally restored things like TVs to life by just ordering and replacing ALL the electrolytic capacitors in them. And, for what it is worth, I replaced those TVs before they failed for a second time.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 11:09:07 am
content: I still repair electronics from time to time and I think in the last decade I've seen one or two failed electrolytics. Whilst I'm sure they do contribute to product failure the more common faults now for TVs are issues with the main flash memory. Bad capacitors are essentially an issue of the past. Even Chinese-made electrolytic capacitors can still last a long time because they have spent effort on the research and development to improve quality. I would still not specify them myself because their performance usually isn't as good as the Japanese makes, but I don't design pricing sensitive equipment.Some engineers do not appreciate that writing to flash memory wears it out because each write requires a page to be erased and data saved to it, this process can only be done around 1,000 - 3,000 times per page. Worse, the hotter the device, the quicker the failure; and, in particular, the type of failure is for flash cells to become progressively leakier, which is itself temperature dependent. The issue can then occur that as the chip warms up - or, often, the chip is placed near to a hot system-on-chip IC - the pages begin to read out corrupt or fail to read out due to ECC fault. This will cause the OS to crash or bug out in various ways. Unfortunately, this is rarely recoverable because manufacturers often do not supply replacement firmware even as a binary image, nor do they provide a way to load this in case of NAND failure (the issue almost never occurs on NOR flash).

author: tigrr
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 08:25:41 pm
content: Quote from: richnormand on December 02, 2024, 07:54:26 pmWhich certainly speaks of their higher quality, compared toSamsungandLGcapacitors

author: tigrr
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 08:32:32 pm
content: Quote from: EPAIII on December 03, 2024, 10:47:30 amCheapandwellis also possible?

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 08:37:34 pm
content: Quickly looking into it, this documentary is an inaccurate shit. Samsung/LG just got particularly unlucky with low esr capacitor series they used (mostly Capxon GF, KF, Samxon GF (GT was fine), Samwha WB (WL was mostly fine)). They may bulge just staying on the shelf never soldered, nor they were the cheapest stuff available. Those who used more expensive Nichicon HN, HM, Chemi-con KZG, KZJ were unlucky as well.

author: tigrr
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 08:41:27 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on December 03, 2024, 11:09:07 amIt's amazing... In a decade!? I didn't specifically count, but I think I definitely changed several hundred.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 08:44:19 pm
content: Capacitors made since 2010 are fine even when come from those brands who produced bulging shit. So unless they're really bottom of the barrel, they'll be fine. Even most of the cheapest Chinese stuff is fine. It was some industry wide shit with materials used, that hit many mid-price manufacturers at the same time. Even Japanese manufacturers were hit. Only low ESR series were affected.

author: tigrr
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 08:46:12 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on December 03, 2024, 08:37:34 pmSamsung/LG are world famous brands and they should not allow choosing bad components.

author: tigrr
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 08:48:37 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on December 03, 2024, 08:44:19 pmI agree. Many electrolytes produced in earlier years than 2010 are also in order.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 08:49:09 pm
content: Quote from: tigrr on December 03, 2024, 08:46:12 pmNobody knew they're bad. As I said above, if you happened to use Nichicon HN, HM, Chemi-con KZG, KZJ, you were just as unlucky.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 08:50:23 pm
content: https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/dell-on-the-nichicon-capacitor-issue/

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 09:14:47 pm
content: It's pretty much like blaming laptop manufacturers who used Nvidia chips produced in 2006-2008, especially Nvidia chipsets for AMD CPUs (GPUs lasted a bit longer). Sure poor cooling exacerbated the issue (hello HP), but all of those were pretty much destined to die sooner or later.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 09:18:59 pm
content: As a point of comparison I had an iiyama monitor that finally died after 18 years old, it had nearly daily use, in the end the CCFLs killed it. The condition of the electrolytic caps on the PSU? They looked fine. The backlight could be forced to run, so I checked PSU ripple. No apparently high PSU ripple. Full of Capxon and Samyoung capacitors... cheap, bottom of the barrel, but... still working.Heat is the enemy of capacitors, appropriate design saves them more than anything else. Yes, many dodgy Chinese caps were out there at the time... but also many reasonably fine caps that still survive to this day.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 09:25:02 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on December 03, 2024, 09:18:59 pmYes, however those capacitors were just inherently flawed regardless how much you load them. AFAIK they were fine in accelerated tests, so nobody caught it until it was way too late.QuoteI bet it either did not use affected capacitor series or was made later when the issue was already fixed. I had seen the same what's on the photo with brand new Jamicon MZ sitting in my parts box.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 09:31:47 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on December 03, 2024, 09:25:02 pmMy point is it's a case of reverse survivor bias. People see a lot of power supplies with bad Capxon capacitors and assume all power supplies with Capxon capacitors will fail. When in reality, the cause is more complex. A power supply that has excessively high ripple current due to crap design will kill any capacitor eventually. A power supply that places capacitors directly above the rectifier heatsink (for a television, for instance, relying on convection currents to cool heatsinks) will also kill capacitors more quickly. If engineers take care, even "crap" capacitors can last a long time.This is why I hate this trend now I have seen with computer PSUs: they specify "Japanese capacitors" (sometimes just primary-side, as if those have ever been the issue) as if these capacitors are immune to failure. Well if you put 1,000uF 16V capacitor on the 12V rail supplying 40A, then even the best quality Rubicon cap will pop in a year's time. What is more important is design choices, like quantity of capacitor, and selecting higher voltage rating parts -- not because voltage is an issue in itself, but higher voltage caps are larger and have higher ripple current. Or, even better, eliminating wet electrolytics altogether and going with polymer capacitors or ceramic where possible. A lot of ATX PSUs now have buck converters for the 5V and 3.3V rails and poly caps feature on these due to the very high switching frequencies, these will likely outlast most of the rest of the power supply's components.

author: tigrr
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 10:05:13 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on December 03, 2024, 09:18:59 pmAbsolutely right. I came to the same conclusion long ago, back in the last century.

author: tigrr
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 10:07:35 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on December 03, 2024, 09:25:02 pmIt's horrible!

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 03, 2024, 10:07:57 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on December 03, 2024, 09:31:47 pmIf they use particular series made in mid-late 2000s, they'll all fail within 3-7 years of normal use. What I find really stupid is that some people still recap devices they just bought right away if they see Capxon or whatever brand they deem unworthy.

author: Infraviolet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2024, 03:18:43 am
content: Just from looking at the video's thumbnail, seems odd to show a phone when it's about (I assume, have yet to watch) the electrolytic capacitor plague. You aren't going to be getting electrolytics in something as thin a profile as a phone, they'll do it all with ceramics (despite the extra cost these give when you want uFs or tens of uFs) surely?

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2024, 05:55:09 am
content: I find it weird that in the videos people bring power supply boards and tv boards to the repair shop. Just trying to imagine that grandma opening up her TV and getting the power supply board out like a ninjaIs this what people in France do or it is all setup for a show.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 04, 2024, 11:53:32 am
content: Quote from: Infraviolet on December 04, 2024, 03:18:43 amYou may find electrolytic in something made in pre-2000. No chance in something more modern. In 2000s they might have used a few tantalums at most. Otherwise it's all MLCC.

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2024, 11:54:13 am
content: Quote from: wraper on December 03, 2024, 08:50:23 pmI started my IT carreer shortly after the capacitor plague made it's round. Sooooo many leaky caps in DELL computers.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 04, 2024, 11:55:53 am
content: Quote from: Ranayna on December 04, 2024, 11:54:13 amYes, and it was all Nichicon.

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2024, 01:47:41 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on December 04, 2024, 11:55:53 amI don't remember the manufacturer. I never was able or had the time to take a really close look back in the day.I don't doubt that DELL used reputable manufacturers though.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 08:08:19 am
content: Top quality electrolytic capacitors will prematurely fail if they are undersized and experience high ripple current, high heat.It's a common trick to save money - use and abuse the lowest value (good brand) cap that works.This pic of an well known appliance manufacturer, sticker makes me laugh and they damn well know the good and the bad.

author: tigrr
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 08:38:08 am
content: It all comes down to money. A large electrolyte for high voltage, compared to a sufficient one, is correspondingly more expensive. And if there are many of them in the product, the price and production cost increase, which means, theoretically, sales fall

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 09:27:47 am
content: Quote from: floobydust on December 05, 2024, 08:08:19 amThat reminds me of Dave's Video of the Deye teardown. Their brochure dedicated half a page to the manufacturers of the components. And then the main caps were still another brand

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 11:54:01 am
content: Quote from: Ranayna on December 04, 2024, 11:54:13 amSome vendors were hit worse than others. Another one was MSI. At first they denied the cap issue, and later they had to accept the facts and replaced affected mainboards. I know of several MSI mainboards which failed just after a year or two.

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 12:59:50 pm
content: I think it was one of the factors that killed Epox. A well respected mainboard manufacturer back in the day.

author: watchmaker
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 01:17:34 pm
content: Quote from: richnormand on December 02, 2024, 07:54:26 pmI will not have Samsung in my house. About 20 years ago we had a 46 inch Samsung TV that failed 3 years out. (maybe wrong on the timing). Googled the issue and found out people sold their broken Samsungs on ebay for $50 and the buyers were replacing the PSU caps for $3 and reselling them. Was going to replace my caps until I found Samsung was forced to settle with owners for repair. The tech replaced the 4 16V ECs with 4 50V ECs. Problem solved. That initial savings of 10 cents cost them 2 hours of tech time (1 hour45 travel, 15 minutes repair).Then we had two Samsung microwaves fail in a year (we had full house surge protector). Found out the xformers were wound with copper CLAD wire.Refrigerator that froze over because the defrost sensor was in the wrong location?It is a company culture thing.Had we known the Korean language, we would have known this company bills itself as a 3 star organization. At least they tell you up front.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 01:41:48 pm
content: Quote from: watchmaker on December 05, 2024, 01:17:34 pmThat's a known design flaw. The defrost heater isn't able to also defrost the drainage. The fix is to place a strip of thin aluminum sheet around the heater with the other end poking into the drainage hole. Of course Samsung didn't tell the customers about this.

author: tigrr
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 01:47:10 pm
content: Quote from: watchmaker on December 05, 2024, 01:17:34 pmAh, it depends on the person... My Samsung TV from 2007 still works. My Samsung microwave oven has been working since 2010.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 02:04:58 pm
content: Quote from: watchmaker on December 05, 2024, 01:17:34 pmThat technician is dumb and wasted money for nothing. Not to say they won't even fit normally (unless it's very low capacitance where voltage rating barely matters in regards to dimensions and price). Going from 10V to 16V or from 16V to 25V may make sense as latter usually will have a bit higher ripple current rating. Going from 16V to 50V, nope. They may even have lower ripple current rating and higher ESR than 25V ones.QuoteAgain, if they were of the same bad series, they would fail anyway. Higher voltage rating does not miraculously make them last more. Not to say, going for larger capacitance would make way more sense in regards of reducing stress from ripple current.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 02:42:32 pm
content: A lot of the re-capped Samsung PSUs used random parts from the tech's drawers, so I wouldn't be surprised if they failed again. My new LG OLED had a buzzing power supply, a known issue with that model. LG sent technicians over that just replaced the power supply which fixed the issue. It isn't worth having a tech replace caps on site - the power supplies will just go back to base where they can be refurbished or recycled.

author: watchmaker
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 02:45:29 pm
content: It was not the tech's decision, it was Samsung's decision and obligation under class action settlement. It worked just fine until we got rid of the TVs.Yep, the defrost is/was a known design flaw. However, Samsung denied such an issue existed for at least two years. IIRC, the fix was moving the sensor??All of these issues point to a culture of disregard of the end user. My failure rate is less than 5%, but pilots and navigators are very particular. If I took the Samsung approach my business would not have thrived for 40 years.

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 03:02:40 pm
content: Quote from: EPAIII on December 03, 2024, 10:47:30 amRIFA says what now??

author: Haenk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 03:29:13 pm
content: Apple had it's good share as well. iMac G5s died like flies, as did the Time Capsules. In general, I had bad hardware from *all* manufacturers, if I remember correctly. "No failure" was probably more a matter of luck when sourcing parts at that time.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 03:40:40 pm
content: Quote from: Ice-Tea on December 05, 2024, 03:02:40 pmThey're paper TBH. As of film capacitors, X safety capacitors lose capacitance all the time. Usually it's not noticeable to device functionality though.

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 03:57:11 pm
content: Depending on whom you ask: just another type of film ;-)

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 04:29:15 pm
content: Apart from some screwed up component designs, that failed for chemical reasons, electrolytics mostly fail because they dry out. They dry out fast when hot. Old stuff runs hot, because the power consumption is high. Over time power consumption tends to fall. Various phases of progress have seen the available space shrink faster than the power consumption, such as in early flat panel TVs, so there were more heat related problems. If you see a lot of capacitor failures in a cool running product, they probably put the failing capacitor in the one hot spot in the whole product. That's just bad, but all too common, design.I've never worked with Samsung or LG's TV operations, but I have done work with several East Asian TV makers. They all seem to work on the basis that their TVs should offer 8 years of trouble free life, so if they consistently fall short of that, it doesn't seem to be due to the low life being set as a design goal. The 3.5 year time to breakdown they talk about in the video is also less than the 5 year warranty they tend to throw in from time to time as a sweetener during promotions. Most of the failures I've seen in recent years, like an LG 55" TV we had that failed at about 7 years, seem to have been BGA soldering problems.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 05:20:19 pm
content: I disagree - decades older electrolytics they did dry out due to the crappy rubber bung shrinking, cracking with age, not sealing well. But the formulations, synthetic rubbers are much better today.Modern electrolytics, you want to make them cheap so use less foil with stronger acid concentrations, which makes corrosion their lifetime issue.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2024, 05:36:12 pm
content: Does anyone know the picture with dry electrolytics? In the 80s they were the saviour of the telecoms industry, replacing the tantalum capacitors which were making the new digital telephone exchanges randomly crash. They were supplied as "long life", without a temperature vs lifetime curve. Failures were very low, although the mechanical construction of early ones from Philips that we used had issues. Now all the PC motherboard makers claiming to use solid electrolytics seem to only claim a 50,000 hour life for them. That would be pretty bad for something running continuously, expected to have a decent lifetime.

author: bat
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2024, 03:30:25 pm
content: Elise Lucet, a very good and talented journalist with a very much dedicated team behind her. They are very much respected in France

author: tigrr
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 09, 2024, 09:14:27 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on December 05, 2024, 05:36:12 pm50,000 is really very little. Only 5.7 years of continuous work.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 10, 2024, 01:12:17 am
content: Quote from: tigrr on December 09, 2024, 09:14:27 pmAt max stress allowed.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2024, 04:12:13 am
content: Not all electrolytic capacitors are short-lived; glass-seal "wet tants" are used in military/aerospace and well known for their reliability. Of course, they are also insanely expensive.Quote from: wraper on December 10, 2024, 01:12:17 amThat reminds me of the infamous "Proadlizer", a 1000h@105C single giant decoupling cap installed under the CPU of many laptops in the late 2000s / early 2010s.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 10, 2024, 04:21:25 am
content: ^Proadlizer also killed many fat PS3. It was shit by itself, worsened by heat. Tantalum or aluminum polymer caps used as replacement at the same hot place had no issue.

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2024, 07:47:43 am
content: Quote from: tigrr on December 09, 2024, 09:14:27 pmFor your information and as others have said: this is for maximum stress. As a rule of thumb, it doubles with every 10°C. So if it is 50k@105°C, then it will be about 40yrs or so when the cap is at 75°C.

author: EPAIII
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2024, 01:46:38 am
content: Cheap and well? Yes, cheap and well can be a possibility. It just takes time.Of course in the commercial world time is money so there goes the cheap. Cheap and well seems to belong to the hobby crowd. But I'm retired so I guess I also belong to that crowd.But even a commercial design can be cheap to make and also perform well. You just need to spread the development time over a lot of units.Quote from: tigrr on December 03, 2024, 08:32:32 pm

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2024, 02:30:04 am
content: Quote from: Ice-Tea on December 10, 2024, 07:47:43 amThat is the picture with wet electrolytics. The question was about dry electrolytics. The dry electrolytics, from Philips and others, which we used in the late 80s when they first appeared claimed extreme lives, without this kind of temperature allowance. Now the electrolytics going into good quality motherboards claim to be dry, yet quote a 50k hour lifetime.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 11, 2024, 02:41:53 am
content: Quote from: coppice on December 11, 2024, 02:30:04 amSAL electrolytic capacitors and aluminum polymer are not the same thing, SAL are closer to MnO2Tantalum capacitors FWIW. Also It's not like SAL have infinite lifetime either, although they can survive higher temperature. It should be noted that aluminum polymer capacitors have their endurance spec at extremely high ripple current (way higher than SAL of similar dimensions).https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/12199.pdfQuote