PART 3 : All You Need To Know About SMD Capacitor Markings Codes To Fix Stuff

[@martin87865]

Thank you Richard. What a fantastic tutorial on Capacitors.

[@rongray8934]

Thank you for all you do for the community of electronics repair. So very helpful.

[@Chief_Engineer]

This was a great and very useful series. Although I studied electronics, including a PhD, there‘s a shedload of stuff I didn‘t know. Talk about the difference between theory and practice… Since I am working in our local repair cafe regularly, all the fault finding tactics and practical knowledge us very useful, so thanks a lot for this👍

[@BJcanal270]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge

[@bellshooter]

Richard, another great in-depth tutorial and support information. I haven't delved into board construction/repair for a number of years so this was very interesting to me. Jealous of you in sunny Gran Canaria, first snow of the winter today in UK, guess that means I'll have to burn a few fivers to heat the house. (cheaper than electricity!)

[@sharymens8187]

Thank you for the video! How significant would the replacement of a light-brown-goldish capacitor be with one that is, unknowingly, not exactly the same?

[@knightwar3]

It turned out that the mistery cap is a cermaic resonator nice! i couldn't find any info online while salvaging those from old remote controls thank you for sharing and nice coverage on capacitors

[@christopherjackson2157]

Resonators are more common in older devices. I think they were a cost-down replacement for crystals in some contexts? You stop seeing them once crystal oscillators dropped in price

[@Foobar_The_Fat_Penguin]

It's my understanding that the actual specifications for X and Y capacitors are not simply a certain failure mode but more complicated, and not mutually exclusive. A cap can fulfill both and then be certified for use in both line-to-line and line-to-earth use. My guess is that most of these modern caps are the self-healing type where the internal arcing burns out the short and the cap just keeps working, if at a slightly reduced capacitance. The specs don't seem to care how the cap would fail if you were to actually destroy it with 100kV. They only care that it can withstand the rated voltage spikes and either fail safely - or not at all.

[@d614gakadoug9]

As far as I can tell the claim that X caps are "designed to fail short circuit" is nothing but mythology that keeps being repeated. Most X caps are metalized film or film and foil. Some use two dielectrics, such as polypropylene film and, surprisingly, paper. A common failure in such caps _is_ shorting, but they can also be "self-healing" - the short clears rather like a low-current fuse with the result of just a tiny reduction in capacitance. Short circuit failure is a serious safety hazard, any way you look at it. Yes, it may cause an overcurrent device to interrupt the current soon enough to prevent a fire but it may not. It would be insane to design anything that goes directly across AC mains to fail to a persistent short circuit. Open-circuit failure of an X cap is perfectly safe and simply results in greater conduction of noise from the device to the AC line or in some cases greater conduction of noise from the line to the device. Nothing I can find suggests that Y caps are "designed to fail open circuit." They are simply ceramic capacitors with very high voltage withstanding ability and sometimes structured as two capacitors in series, as are some film caps. This is the equivalent of "double insulated" and makes the probability of short circuit failure very low.

[@dkmmhdk]

I've seen X capacitors fail both short and open. We've got a vacuum cleaner that once blew it's X-cap, it failed short and blew the 10A fuse in the fusebox. At a later time I've had a frequency counter that had a Rifa X-cap inside an encapsulated mains filter blow, this one failed open. maybe a little sign of leakage when tested, but not enough to short the power line, but the magic smoke escaped . The 3 legged resonators could perhaps also be ceramic filters, some radios use / have used ceramic filters in the IF instead of the cans containing an adjustable coil+capacitor.

[@SkippiiKai]

If you have a 1kv X&Y cap and you want to know if it fails open or short, just hook it up to a 2kv source and try it! I've got a bunch of spare microwave transformers lying around, but I don't think my caps are both X&Y.

[@payo_muscle_studio]

thank u so much .. please help me with the link for the markings and codes

[@ELGIBBORIM]

my friend, I have a problem with the capacity mark of the 3X 471OJ mark on the MSI Z87-G43 motherboard....please help me, what is the volt and which one could you substitute to make it work

[@Martyn-ey9lw]

maybe the capacitor marked x and y is one of these new fangled "gender fluid" capacitors😁

[@tonysheerness2427]

Electronics is getting to be to unwieldy to be a hobby as there are to many components and variations.

[@LearnElectronicsRepair]

Nah that's what makes it *interesting* 😉

[@Chief_Engineer]

It does have its challenges indeed. You need to have microscopic eyesight, esp. for short distances, you must not be colour blind and you need google at hand to find all the series decoding schemes. 😮 You need a pair of steady hands with heat proof fingertips. And you need voodoo😅

[@tonysheerness2427]

I watch electronics videos and they are always buying multiples of what they need just in case. Look at Richard he has hundreds of little drawers with parts he will never use or sometimes if needed can not find and buys them again.@@Chief_Engineer

[@keithking1985]

​@@Chief_Engineer😂😂😂