Richard, when a student, we had an end of year project. This project
involved a quite fine power supply with a very good filtration stage (at
that time, switching power supply was not even a dream..).
The college, had bought a huge lot of capacitors for a very bargain price.
The catch was that the capacitors were marked falselly. A pro engineer
would have devised this, but not me. When I powered my power supply,
the 10 huge caps rocketed up to the ceilling and hit the lamp fixture,
exploding it (it was some sort of plasitc) the whole lab was spread by
chemical fumes and bit of plastic...
I was blamed because I soldered the caps in reverse, until my friend
powered it's set...
No one was seriously injured, but all people present took the lesson
very seriously. And it was a long time ago !
Richard Knoppow a écrit :
----- Original Message ----- From: "Dana H. Myers" <dana.myers@xxxxxxxxx> To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2006 8:06 PM Subject: [pure-silver] Re: Speedotron 2401A
I used to repair strobes as a business.
You ever abuse an electrolytic until it explodes? I learned that lesson pretty early myself... sure made a mess.
Dana K6JQ
Very long ago I built my first audio amplifier. The filter caps were Aerovox electrolytic units which were probably slightly undervalued for voltage. I had a couple blow up on me. They sound like a .45 going off and leave a mess that smells strongly of Ammonia. I had one blow up on a carpet. My mom was not happy about this. I switched to Mallory caps and had no more problems.
Caps for strobe units are special. They must take constant cycling which will shorten the life of caps made for filter purposes. Remember, there is also a lot of mechanical stress on a cap when it charges and discharges. The same principle that is behind condenser loudspeakers and microphones also applies to all capacitors: the plates move when the charge is changed. I was visiting a very large electrical distribution station at one time and was near a bank of phase correction capacitors that were switched in. Boy, did I jump. These sounded not like a .45 but more like a cannon.
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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