[Elecraft] Electrolytic Capacitor failure

Gill hamop at protonmail.com
Thu Apr 16 10:19:01 EDT 2020


As Harlan pointed out - I was an engineer for the FAA until retirement - 
We changed electrolytics as part of normal PM's on critical systems 
usually every 5 years or so. CDE (Cornell Dubilier) indicates expected 
life (MTBF) of devices operated within rated voltage & temp specs to be 
about 80-100 thousand hours. Most failures occur quickly around the end 
of that period. For 24/7 operated systems, that translates to around 
8-10 years before rapid EOL failures begin to occur. Electrolytics can 
be thought of like incandescent lamps - they have a finite useful life 
and the fail quickly around the end of that time. ESR (Equivalent Series 
(AC) resistance) increases which reflects in higher ripple currents in 
power supplies are a main culprit. Check out: 
https://www.cde.com/resources/technical-papers/reliability.pdf
73 Gill W4RYW



More information about the Elecraft mailing list