Dare I say Bob Roberts is the Alpo of parts? 🐕

I've used 20+ year old caps before. But they were good quality caps to begin with, and they've been stored properly. I measure/test them before I use them. Never had a problem. Given the choice between an old Nichicon and a new Lelon... that's an easy decision for me.
 
mattosborn said:
I've used 20+ year old caps before. But they were good quality caps to begin with, and they've been stored properly. I measure/test them before I use them. Never had a problem. Given the choice between an old Nichicon and a new Lelon... that's an easy decision for me.
Click to expand...

Never considered the "storage" aspect. What is the PROPER storage of a capacitor? I'm assuming the climate controlled workshop is better than the warehouse type deal? I'm not disagreeing, but is there actual data on how different environments affect the life expectancy? The nerd in me is what asks lol.
 
Pinball Wizard said:
Never considered the "storage" aspect. What is the PROPER storage of a capacitor? I'm assuming the climate controlled workshop is better than the warehouse type deal? I'm not disagreeing, but is there actual data on how different environments affect the life expectancy? The nerd in me is what asks lol.
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Basically just don't keep them in a freezer, or an oven, or at the bottom of a river.

Electrolytic caps are basically a tin can with a rubber plug at one end, full of liquid. So if you left them on a windowsill in direct sunlight for ten years, the UV might be bad for the rubber. Common sense stuff.

These caps are designed and rated to operate over a large temperature range, so they aren't fragile things. As long as extremes are avoided, a quality cap should be fine in storage for a very long time.
 
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Pinball Wizard said:
Never considered the "storage" aspect. What is the PROPER storage of a capacitor? I'm assuming the climate controlled workshop is better than the warehouse type deal? I'm not disagreeing, but is there actual data on how different environments affect the life expectancy? The nerd in me is what asks lol.
Click to expand...
Just your standard "cool/dry" storage. For me, that means they're in a sealed bag, sometimes in a box, on a shelf in my basement. Anywhere that doesn't have extreme temperature and humidity swings. Not sure about any actual studies.
 
There a series of bad caps made a while ago. If recall they would fail after a year or two of use. If you want to learn do some research.

I got older caps from old tube radios days.

My point is use your common sense. Look at the use of the cap. Lower frequency caps compared higher frequency caps.

Use a scope, when in doubt.

Yes, big blue caps do fail. We had 3 failed at banning. A soft cap in a star wars sit down. One from physically damage. A real bad cap for a 4 player table top cocktail. Mine you this is from over 1k of machines we worked on. They do fail but rarely. A scope will give you the answer your asking.
 
I, for one, enjoy these threads because it presents an opportunity for an old noob like me to maybe learn something... and buy new tools!

andrewb said:
There are many ESR meters out there now, but the Anatek Blue is a classic:
Click to expand...

The Anatek looks a-ok, but any reason one of these couldn't suffice?

Cheaper:

A bit more:
 
TastyBoogerz said:
I, for one, enjoy these threads because it presents an opportunity for an old noob like me to maybe learn something... and buy new tools!

The Anatek looks a-ok, but any reason one of these couldn't suffice?

Cheaper:

A bit more:
Click to expand...


I can speak for the Blue, because I own its predecessor, the Dick Smith meter. I have no firsthand experience with any of the others, but any of them will likely get the job done. These things are just like DMM's in that they all basically do the same thing, but some of them might have small quirks and features that make you like one over the other.

We had a thread about ESR meters back in January, which covered a lot of the newer ones:

Cheap ESR meters

I've never really felt like I "needed" an esr meter, but I do think it would be fun to play around with for confirming suspect caps and just general toying around with. Are the cheap $30 Chinese ones on eBay a total waste of time? I don't want to spend a lot of money on this but I also...
forums.arcade-museum.com

If I were to buy one today, I'd probably get one that does capacitance and ESR together, like the Peak Design one in post #17.
 
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andrewb said:
I can speak for the Blue, because I own its predecessor, the Dick Smith meter. I have no firsthand experience with any of the others, but any of them will likely get the job done. These things are just like DMM's in that they all basically do the same thing, but some of them might have small quirks and features that make you like one over the other.

We had a thread about ESR meters back in January, which covered a lot of the newer ones:

Cheap ESR meters

I've never really felt like I "needed" an esr meter, but I do think it would be fun to play around with for confirming suspect caps and just general toying around with. Are the cheap $30 Chinese ones on eBay a total waste of time? I don't want to spend a lot of money on this but I also...
forums.arcade-museum.com

If I were to buy one today, I'd probably get one that does capacitance and ESR together, like the Peak Design one in post #17.
Click to expand...
Why does inductance get no love?
 
rod90 said:
Why does inductance get no love?
Click to expand...

For consumer electronics, inductors generally just aren't used as much as caps. Plus they're pretty simple things (i.e., just coils of wire in some form), and they don't really have chemical properties that age over time, enough to be a problem.

There aren't that many inductors on arcade boards. And the ones that are there, don't really go bad. And if they did go bad, it's basically because the coil of wire somehow breaks (e.g., if it takes too much current somehow, and opens like a fuse). And you can verify that with a continuity test with a DMM.

So they're more of a go/no-go thing, and there aren't really that many cases in consumer electronics where you need to test the value of an inductor.
It's either the value that was installed at the factory, or it's an open circuit.
 
andrewb said:
For consumer electronics, inductors generally just aren't used as much as caps. Plus they're pretty simple things (i.e., just coils of wire in some form), and they don't really have chemical properties that age over time, enough to be a problem.

There aren't that many inductors on arcade boards. And the ones that are there, don't really go bad. And if they did go bad, it's basically because the coil of wire somehow breaks (e.g., if it takes too much current somehow, and opens like a fuse). And you can verify that with a continuity test with a DMM.

So they're more of a go/no-go thing, and there aren't really that many cases in consumer electronics where you need to test the value of an inductor.
It's either the value that was installed at the factory, or it's an open circuit.
Click to expand...
Try working on some obsolete old stuff. Sourcing replacements gets difficult without knowing a value.
 
rod90 said:
Try working on some obsolete old stuff. Sourcing replacements gets difficult without knowing a value.
Click to expand...

Oh, of course. I'm not saying there's never a need for it anywhere. It's just not that common in this hobby, or most stuff where schematics are available.

If you're tuning air-coil inductors for RF/radio circuits, you might need to measure inductance too. But that's outside the scope of this hobby.

Many DMM's support inductance, even cheap ones. My $40 UNI-T UT58D has it. But I don't think I've ever needed to measure inductance for an arcade repair.
 
andrewb said:
Oh, of course. I'm not saying there's never a need for it anywhere. It's just not that common in this hobby, or most stuff where schematics are available.

If you're tuning air-coil inductors for RF/radio circuits, you might need to measure inductance too. But that's outside the scope of this hobby.

Many DMM's support inductance, even cheap ones. My $40 UNI-T UT58D has it. But I don't think I've ever needed to measure inductance for an arcade repair.
Click to expand...
Get out of the 80's. Wall game remotes run on RF. I also see other pretty uncommon and undocumented things in my travels.
 
rod90 said:
Looking for any Bronze Age games. Is this you?

Yes, the 80's gave us a lot. But there are many other games not from this era.
Click to expand...
And fortunately there are people like you that can fix them. I've really enjoyed some of your repair threads on the really old mechanical stuff, which has always amazed me that they ever worked in the first place.
 
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