[ARC5] Resistor Excursions

Bob kb8tq kb8tq at n1k.org
Fri Apr 19 19:23:33 EDT 2024


Hi

If you *do* decide to replace CC’s with a different type of resistors, do a deep dive into just how weird CC’s are at RF. Unlike pretty much all other resistors, they drop value, but stay resistive as frequency goes up. While that sounds a lot like a resistor model that includes a cap, it’s not. The phase shift with “pure resistive” is not the same …. 

How much does this matter? It very much depends on how tricky the circuit happens to be. In many cases … not a big deal. 

Bob

> On Apr 19, 2024, at 7:14 PM, Richard Knoppow <1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> 
>    FWIW, carbon composition resistors were not made in tolerances closer than 5%. I think the reason is that the heat of soldering could move them at least that much.
>    My understanding of the cause of the drift is that over time, and with the influence of moisture and heat, the tiny carbon particles, which make up the conductor, lose contact with each other. This is also the reason they are noisier than deposited film resistors and noisier than the Johnson noise predicted by the value.
>    If moisture the the main cause its possible that heat of soldering might move them back by increasing the particle contact. I suspect that otherwise heat or baking will cause them to move further away from the specified value. It would take some formal experimentation to determine this.
>   My experience is that higher value CC resistors are almost always out of spec, anything of above 100K and probably less. At 1 meg and more the drift is severe.
>   CC resistors seem to have no paricular virtues although I have seen pulse handling mentioned. Since deposited carbon or metal film resistors are now cheap and easy to obtain it seems to me there is no good reason to use CC resistors for anything.   BTW, there are resistors known as oxide composition. I think these are rather different from the old carbon comp resistors and seem to have advantages for moderate power levels.
> 
> On 4/19/2024 3:14 PM, sbjohnston--- via ARC5 wrote:
>> Over the years I've noticed that an off-value resistor can be significantly impacted by the heat of the unsoldering to take it out of the circuit.
>> Usually the heat makes the out-of-tolerance resistor get better for a while, but in a few cases the warmth made it worse.
>> For me it didn't matter - I could not trust that resistor and it was headed to the trash either way.  But this might give us some insight into the problem.
>> Steve WD8DAS
>> sbjohnston at aol.com
>> http://www.wd8das.net/ <http://www.wd8das.net/>
>> http://af4k-crystals.com <http://af4k-crystals.com>/
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> 
> -- 
> Richard Knoppow
> Los Angeles
> WB6KBL
> SKCC 19998
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