Are you guys and girls interested in seeing further capacitor analysis? Perhaps investigating the impact of cooling on the ripple current handling of the KEMET polymer cap; or maybe looking further into the quirky capacitance and ESR variations of the CeraLink; or even making a circuit to test out the PolyCharge capacitors in the real world? Let me know what you want to see next!
I've been in power electronics for most of my career (I'm now retired at 67) and this was one of the best explanations about capacitors I have ever seen. Nice job.
I did electronics in the late 80s before being told I had to go into computers when all telecoms etc went digital. it stuff goes out of date every 18 months min 😢
The real advantage of the wet tantalum is that one plate is made of pure tantalum and the dialectic is produced by creating a tantalum oxide film over that. The second "plate" is sulphuric acid, so in the event the oxide layer (dielectric ) gets damaged (say by accidentally exceeding its breakdown voltage) the acid reoxides it effectively making it self healing. While the value might drift as a result, at least having a working cap could mean the difference between life and death in the aerospace industry.
Tantalums are used extensively for space applications. However, they are quite finicky and prone to shorting when failing, but luckily they tend to fail during the first few power cycles and are otherwise quite reliable if you take care to not stress them with fast discharging or high voltage.
Very good presentation. For ceramic capacitors there are two classes of dielectric, (1 & 2 of course), which present different characteristics, price, volume/capacitance, voltage offset, piezoelectricity, and such. Class 1 dielectrics are NP0 and C0G most commonly, and class 2 dielectrics include X7R, Y5V, etc. Also, the wet-slug Tantalum capacitor is seldom the best choice for commercial applications, but in high-reliability, harsh environment, service they are usually indestructible (with no known failure mode when operated within ratings). They would be the kind of bulk capacitance you would find in space probes (Voyager, New Horizons, etc.) or military applications. I have some I use for bench testing that were made in 1976, and they still work fine.
@@jacobfaseler5311 We still use them quite a bit in space applications, usually for hold-up capacitance. As switch-mode power supply frequencies increase they are less useful as time goes by.
Man, had the modern internet existed when I went to college for my engineering degree it would have been such a different experience. Content like this would have made things so much easier.
@stellamcwick8455 So what preceded this "Modern Internet".? I'm small town rural Australia, been connected since 1978. Access to University's and Library's on every continent. "Content like this" drove the Internet into existence. All be it still images and pages of text, bbs and forums. 👉"A great deal of what we find, depends greatly on, what we are looking for."
@@snakezdewiggle6084 , to be clear Im referring to the ability to pull up videos and tutorials like this on my phone, not have to read it from some poorly written blogpost or BBS file. Even in the 90’s when I went to school we only had dial-up. Great for BBS’s and low resolution blog posts but useless for any type of streaming and video media content. Even when I was in school we didn’t have a LAN so to speak save for a coax token ring for printing. My only sources of information were the books we had for class, the library, or the instructors when you could schedule time with them, or one or two really shitty web 1.0 websites. If i had been able to access the thousands of hours of commentary and videos that dealt with very specific topics and subjects I was struggling with, that discussed those topics from a multitude of viewpoints and levels of complexities from a multitude of cultural perspectives, I wouldn’t have struggled to understand those concepts nearly as much. College would have been far more fruitful.
I could have sent you a handful of the tantalums and saved you some money. I have thousands of old surplus caps. BTW, tantalum capacitors are also electrolytic capacitors, so you can think of electrolytic capacitors by their chemistry, as being either tantalum electrolytic or aluminum electrolytic. I note that these days a lot of people are calling aluminum electrolytic caps just 'electrolytic' capacitors, as if aluminum was the only sort of electrolytic capacitor in use. The electrolytically created dielectric is the reason both aluminum and tantalum dielectric caps are polarized. If they are installed backward the dielectric layer will be depleted until they short circuit between the plates. Capacitors have so many other different parameters that may or may not be of importance in any specific application. From frequency handling ability, to absolute temperature handling, to capacity per size, that picking the best cap for the application becomes quite an engineering project, just as picking the best inductor for the job does as well. A video on picking the right inductor could go on for hours. Just the words to describe inductor parameters can run pages. Another important but seldom considered characteristic of capacitors is the degree of sensitivity to microphonics. That has created problems in more than one product over the years. Some power caps are very subject to microphonics. After all, a 'condenser' microphone Is really just a capacitor. 100 years ago capacitors were all called 'condensers'. But as science learned more about the processes of electrons and fields they decided that 'condenser' wasn't a very good description of the device and changed the name to capacitor. The automotive industry was one of the last to call capacitors condensers, at least in old style spark distributors. In microphone audio, as noted, capacitor microphones are still being called 'condenser' mics. BTW, capacitors used in power RF applications were not included in your video. AC and RF power capacitors are very different from DC power capacitors, and variable RF power capacitors are even more different.
I ordered my DER EE DE-5000 from Tokyo on September 1st 2024 for £100.44 with free postage and it arrived at my house on September 4th 2024. It came without any leads, battery or English instruction manual. I did a Google Search for the device and as Elektor didn't get a mention I settled on Ebay. I get the Elektor Magazine and their Newsletter. Absolutely no issues with VAT.
Such a good video! Straight to the points, no unnecessary fluff bullshit, explaining things that need to be explained, even sponsorship is absolutely spot on. I'd totally love if more of UA-cam was like this. The only little I'd want to add is how electrolytic capacitors create their barrier between layers (IIRC something about electrolyte creating very thin oxide layer which serves as dielectric), but otherwise, wow. Thank you.
I sort of knew what each type of capacitor is good at but wanted to know what this video had to show. I must say I learnt a lot more... Thanks for the wonderful video. "film capacitor do what film capacitors do best - turning into inductors, and polycharge taking alternate route to uselessness" That was super hilarious :)
My favorite feature of electrolytic capacitors is the cross-shaped notches in the metal plate at the top. Designed to tear open apart and direct the explosion and boiling electrolyte away from the PCB, instead of spraying it all around, and also create a neat hole for the pressure to escape instead of sending shrapnel of the casing in all directions. Literally, them exploding is such an inherent trait they have a feature engineered in, to minimize adverse impact of the explosion.
Excellent. Loved your MOSFET video too. I hope to see this kind of video about every major Electronic component. Diodes will be a good candidate for the next video. There are so many variations of them.
Thanks for the hard work. Great video and useful information. The only time I have had to replace wet tantalum capacitors is when I was repairing Fluke calibration equipment.
Really great video! I enjoy the thorough explanation as I had to figure most of this out myself during my education. I also like that you test some equipment, because I am always on the look out for good meters that aren't the costing an arm and a leg.
Very informative! A lot of really good information here. It's amazing how capacitors have evolved over the course of my career in electronics. So many better choices today than back when I started in the field. We really haven't seen this kind of change with other passive components.
When comparing apples to apples, remember that each type has it's ideal use (which is why they are different), and so it will be hard to get an equal test output when trying to display results. Maybe show a graph where each type is used in it's natural environment. The comparison output, or result, would be, "As it is used typically." Kind of like competition racing. Drag cars, and 'bumper cars' (demolition derby) could be shown in a comparo, but they would have to be displayed and graphed in comparison to cars of their own type 'in circuit' (haha), and then correlated across in comparison. Cool video. Good vocal articulation, excellent presentation, and I like the charts and stats, which can often say in 20 seconds what it takes 20 minutes to explain with words. ;):👍
👍 I can only complain about hard to read graph colors, probably due to platform compression. Also, perhaps a deeper dive to the explain the confusion between cap impedance and ESR.
The coolest capacitors i got to play around with were mica paper capapacitors used for military applications. They are quite small, high voltage and have an extremely low ESR. They work quite well for RF applications even though they are designed for pulse power applications ❤
@@electrarc240 You are making me very jealous - I wish I could go back to study electronics:) I teach physics and chemistry at the moment ( A Level ) and have a keen interest in electronics. You are a great teacher - very well paced, clear and concise in all your videos. I would suggest some kind of series where we can construct some breadboard projects with you - maybe even think about a patreon? I would 100% pay for some tuition on circuit design and understanding of schematics.
@@james5553 I think for the next year I won't have enough time for a Patreon due to work, but could possibly do a series like you suggest. I would certainly like to get more younger viewers as currently only around 5-10% are my age. But I would definitely like to do teaching in many forms after university. Thanks for the kind words!
Embedded systems engineer here, couple notes about capacitor ESR, been building my own SMPS (STM32-microcontroller) control board and it's currently running a low voltage buck topology practice board with a self-wound toroidal inductor and have gotten great experience from making the thing from scratch and learning along the way with all the programming for the ADC and PWM peripherals and probing the power board with an oscilloscope. Too little ESR can actually be bad in SMPS application, you actually want some, because it dampens the oscillations between the inductor and capacitors on the output. Had a slight ringing without any external extra resistor, but after adding a small series resistor to the big electrolytic on the output side, the big ringing calmed down, but then because of the added resistance I noticed an increase on the small signal AC voltage ripple, which makes sense as the capacitor can't dampen them as effectively with the increased ESR. So you can tune the output filtering either towards the large DC signal transient filtering with added ESR, or the faster small AC signal ripple with lower ESR. I hadn't ever internalized this before and will likely be adding a place for a series resistor for the bulk capacitors in the future.
I may be wrong here but it sort of sounds like you're just turning a noise issue into a heat/loss issue, instead of solving the underlying problem. I have seen quite a bunch of converter circuits and I don't recall ever coming across a design that had a deliberately added series resistor for the bulk capacitors. I don't know the details of your design, but if you have ringing at the output that suggests that your filtering may be insufficient or you may have flaws in your design, such as too high parasitic inductances in critical current loops. Instead of adding a resistor you may want to try tweaking the layout or adding smaller capacitors parallel to the bulk capacitors. Or whatever other thing you can do to reduce the ringing without just turning the noise into heat in a resistor.
@user-td3yi1mq7p hahaha I completely missed the part at the top where he's working with a buck converter, I was under the impression he was working on a flyback topology. I agree with you, he's using RC filtering on his output to compensate for some sort of noise issue elsewhere in the design. Like you suggest it's likely he's missing the notion that bulk smoothing capacitance isn't effective for high frequency bypassing, the addition of a low esr bypass cap is probably the missing piece. It's also possible that his pwm methodology is introducing a lot of harmonics, since it sounds like he programmed his own controller, it's also unclear if he's got any current compensation.
Appreciate you devoting so much effort to making these videos, really interesting stuff. I work with electronics and quite complicated appliances with some unusual power systems as part of my job. That said, compared to many of my colleagues who are very experienced qualified electronics engineers, I often feel like the idiot holding the soldering iron by the hot end then wondering what the burning smell is. 😅 I'm finding your videos particularly useful as revision guides, explainers and deep dives; after the algorithm recommended your PSU component explainer to me I quickly watched all of them! Once again, really interesting subject material, about topics relevant to my work and hobbies, so they're also very useful reference guides. Enjoy the delivery and editing too 🙂👍 Looking forward to future videos. 🍻
Nice stuff... I was dealing with audio electronics a while back as work and now back to hobby. I always place very high quality capacitors on the board, and especially very high grade small capacitors right next to the load. Like DAC chips and opamp chips. Polymer electrolytic (used to be Sanyo OS-CON)/ceramic for digital circuits, good old Elna Silmic II and Nichicon KZ/UKZ for the analog section. While these are significantly more expensive than the cheapest commodity grade stuff from the same manufacturers, they are still quite cheap for the difference they make and the overall cost of the end product. Just recapped a Nikko Alpha 230 power amp recently, was surprised to find out have 1uf/100V bypass caps on the power output transistors stage. Upgraded them to 10uF/100V with the caps I have in my drawer. Managed to upgrade most except for the bipolar electrolytic and the two big filter caps. Lots of fun....
I'm interested in learning more about the effects of ESR and how it's accounted for in designs. I know, for example, that ESR is calculated in analog circuits that include a lot of DC restoration or waveform demodulation.
Congratulations! This is a Master's Dissertation right there presented in 42 minutes. You ought to publish this in book form and make it easy for all of us. Thanks for making this, and yes, I'm interested in more info on the topic.
That "aircore" cap could have also been a variable cap used in an old radio tuner. Good video....strange story but once I used some defibrillator caps to build a flashlamp pumped laser.
Yeah it was I have quite a few air core caps I use for demonstrations like this, they are definitely the best for showing the simple parallel plate concept
For nice cutaway views of capacitors and many other electronic components you will enjoy "Open Circuits" - a fantastic coffee table book by Eric Schlaepfer and Windsor H. Oskay.
No, it’s quite hard data to find and the Keysight LCR meter I used didn’t have a HV bias option installed so I couldn’t test myself. I admit that may have skewed the data somewhat it’s a good point I hadn’t really considered. Thanks
@@electrarc240 Sometimes it's in the data sheet. From what I have seen, many ceramic caps drop down to only 20% of their listed capacitance at max voltage. I also noticed this when I did some measurements on a board with only ceramic caps and was wondering why the resonance frequency was lower than expected.
So glad i found you! Im restoring 50's Telefunken tube-amp stereo and i want to use an interesting cap to filter the input power. Can i go foil? Do foils come with a ground?
On the film capacitors, it seems possible that since the dielectric is both mechanical and flexible it may vibrate at lower frequencies and show effects caused by the resonance of these vibrations. Maybe?
Reliability testing is quite interesting too, how companies over stress components and extrapolate the results to guesstimate the lifetime on the datasheet, sometimes 100k hours+. Definitely not the most accurate numbers on datasheets lol
min 27:36 you can see that TDK and KEMET have the same weird QUALITY FACTOR response, only in a different scale. They have the same peaks at the same time.
I, umm, kinda hate to be the one to point this out now, after the fact, but you know that instead of a fancy PCB and everything, you could have just, well, _soldered a wire_ across each of the pairs of pins on those 4-pin capacitors, right? Seriously great video, though. Some of those graphs are absolutely spectacular at demonstrating really well the differences between all these different types, and why you might want to pick one over another for a particular application. I don't think I've ever seen anything else that did such a good job of explaining it.
The inductance would make a difference for those DC link capacitors even though it is only a few nH. By overlapping the DC plains of the PCB this can be reduced a lot. Thanks a lot!!
Total layman here but I suspect the two spikes in the lower frequencies are related to resonance along the length and width of the film. Being such low frequencies, I'd even suspect a physical wave due to charge repulsion/attraction to travel through the film, modulating its capacitance. Just guesses. Feel free to rip me apart ;)
I am a total neophyte about this, but I appreciate the glimpse into how much more complex things are that I thought - but I should have known they are. For audio filters, it would be great to see how bypass caps change things, and whether the main cap and the bypass cap "should" be the same type? I had thought (before watching this video) that smaller caps have lower ESR than larger ones; and that this was why bypass caps are used - but obviously the bypass cap is not lowering the ESR?
If the two are connected in parallel then the smaller cap will have better performance at higher frequencies. While big caps have low ESR they also tend to have more inductance and therefore are less effective at higher frequencies. A mix of several sizes and types is ideal
@@electrarc240 Thanks - it is the more extended treble that comes with using a bypass, that is great. And I would expect the the net ESR is reduced from the parallel caps? I also wonder if audio signal has enough current to significantly heat the caps - and I would suspect that parallel cabs would reduce the heating and/or increase heat dissipation, and improve performance, over a longer time?
I believe it is mostly due to an effect called dielectric absorption where the capacitor basically has a memory so if it is charged up for a long time at say 1kV then you discharge it and leave it, it may charge back up to 100-200V over time. tbh I don't really understand it but I know large film capacitors should always be left with a shorting link to prevent this
I repaired an old boss me-10 ss effects pedal for guitar. They bought a bad batch of sanyos that year and every cap in every unit that year died just out of warranty. The 100uf decoupling smd electrolytic caps all reek so bad that I could only remove a few at a time or the wife went nuts because of the stink haha
My dad got me a massive 10000uF (10mF) cap at Fry's Electronics once. It was fun to play with. If you touched a wire to both the leads it would spark. (It was only 5v iirc so not that big of a deal) I dreamt about getting 100 of those together in the same place and making a 1 farad capacitor bank
What i want to know is how switching capacitors of the same rated spec would sound differently in an audio amplifier. Is it because of the discharge speed?
(11:46) Film, capasitors? Like what is seen in some household/industrial fans? (INDFLRF) EDIT: (12:22) I have one that I took apart to se how it works. Looks exactly as described. EDIT2: (24:01) So, this is what I popped on my AMD Saphire Video Card. Wondering of alternatives then since not an IC as I thought initially.
I'm 52, just starting out in electronics and I won't lie, this video just made my eyes glaze over. You need to break it down fir me like "Barney the dinosaur" style. 😊
You really need a way to measure these capacitors with a DC bias. Many ceramic capacitors capacitance drops off drastically when a DC voltage is applied. Sometimes you only get 20% of the rated capacitance near their rated voltage. Also, some capacitors will act as a microphone. Not a nice behavior in a loud environment.
Ahh sorry! I never originally intended to show them all together so I matched the lines to the colour of the caps. Then when I did combine them all I couldn't really think of a good way to differentiate them, though now something like using a dashed line seems obvious...
They are very easy to purchase and replace. I have never paid for such service. I purchase them on a schedule so I’m almost never caught out waiting for a part.
An electrolytic capacitor next to any resistor is basically a time bomb for smoke as anyone who works in electronics knows it's so insane to me how many consumer products have this flaw still
Hello. I have an ongoing backyard project which requires for the electronics I build to operate in high humidity environments. I have had success with tantalum capacitors so far, but they can get expensive and I want higher capacitance. Normal electrolytic caps don't maintain their values due to humidity. Luckily, I only need to operate at 12 V, or I wouldn't be able to use tantalum caps either. I've not tried polymer capacitors because I'm a perma-noob and haven't heard of them. Do you know if they're any good for humid environments? Are any of the others? Thank you in advance!
Have you considered using a hermetic case for your PCB? That way, you wouldn’t have to worry about selecting components that can handle extreme conditions.
The electrolytic capacitor in heat pumps is often a single point of failure. While that's really helpful for the HVAC guy's swimming pool and boat payments, the labour for this simple replacement is ridiculous for the homeowner. Can you recommend a different replacement type that will be more robust and do the business? 73 DE W8LV BILL
You'd probably want to use proper polypropylene metallized film capacitors for that. If you get some quality ones from Kemet, Vishay or similarly reputable source rated at 10k hours they'll last for a very long time. They're self healing and capacitor lifespan is rated at their max temperature so at slightly elevated ambient temperatures those 10k hours look more like 20+ years.
Stupid question , but wouldn't electrolytic capacitors also be considered to be hermetically sealed? Until the top pops off that is . Im asking because it seems like the tantalums are more expensive in part because they are sealed. But maybe hermetically sealed in this case is more than just "sealed" haha, but the fact that they need the pressure release caps made me think that wet electrolytic are actually air tight.
I think hermetically sealed is more than just "air tight", but not gonna lie I'm not an expert. Spoke to someone at work who used to work at NASA and he said they are used a lot there but wasn't really sure why lol (for the small ones like this, the big ones have the outstanding energy density I mentioned)
electrolytic capacitors have vents so they can release some pressure without blowing out. Even the best vents are less than 100% sealed. Not all cap vents are the best either. The slits are for catastrophic failures. When the vent isn't cutting it. Electrolytic capacitors are ongoing disasters basically. There's two kinds of electrolytic caps, ones that have failed and ones that have yet to fail.
For a while I was like, what on earth are these para-electronics he keeps talking about 😅 before he got to the Hz of mains, and I finally realized he was saying "power electronics" 😂
Well done very interesting The differences between them can be huge. What capacitor would you suggest for collecting maximum back EMF from a motor coil to be reused again? Into another drive coil in parallel with a capacitor
@@electrarc240 thank you for the reply. I want to make a axial flux motor that reuses the back EMF drive coils to another set of outer coils instantaneously timed to the outer coils for additional free torque from the back EMF. It should result in a really efficient motor if I can find the right UF AC capacitor.
@@gregstafford2155 Drawing current from the back EMF results in negative torque to will slow the motor down / make it harder to turn, most brushless motors are already 90% efficient or more so there's not a lot of room for improvement sadly.
@@electrarc240I've already proven it works with pulse motors on a small scale. Motor speeds up when I reuse the back EMF into another coil with no additional input. it's going to be a pulsed triggered motor using optical or hall sensor. Just need the correct capacitor for the backing MF coils but I think I can work it out now with experimentation thanks anyway
Is the film cap reacting to wifi or or ...? In a test in remote location remember to turn your phone off also. Anyway, if the cause can be determined, it might be useful in some unexpected way.
Those wobbles in the film could be microfcany.( no idea how to spell that). It's kind of in the audio bandwidth, were you listening to music when you did the measurements?. If it was the capacitor plates acting as a microphone , it would be surprising, as I seem to remember film capacitors were all the good in that respect, and the high value ceramics we're lousy. PS fantastic video
30:45 why not just a piece of thick wire? The inductance shouldn´t be too bad compared to a pcb. But the pins will be internally connected anyway, so it probably does not matter at all. The biggest purpose of the four pins is mechanical stability.
I wanted the best possible inductance, and an interleaved "laminate busbar style" PCB would be best. As you say perhaps it wouldn't make all that much difference. The PCB has now arrived and will work for the film cap so I may see what effect, if any, it has
Are you guys and girls interested in seeing further capacitor analysis? Perhaps investigating the impact of cooling on the ripple current handling of the KEMET polymer cap; or maybe looking further into the quirky capacitance and ESR variations of the CeraLink; or even making a circuit to test out the PolyCharge capacitors in the real world? Let me know what you want to see next!
Short answer? Yes!
A. hell yes B. smhmh enbies are uninterested in capacitors... all they know these days is blue hair be pretty and hot chip. and no capacitors.
Definately yeess
I would like a comparison of the different types of caps in a real circuit that can make you see the differences in the real world.
Too right
I've been in power electronics for most of my career (I'm now retired at 67) and this was one of the best explanations about capacitors I have ever seen. Nice job.
I did electronics in the late 80s before being told I had to go into computers when all telecoms etc went digital. it stuff goes out of date every 18 months min 😢
I think I've seen your comment on multiple videos 🤔
Why are you watching a video on capacitors if you already know
@@ThatGuyThatCommentedOn_A_Video - I don't know everything. New technologies are coming out every day.
The real advantage of the wet tantalum is that one plate is made of pure tantalum and the dialectic is produced by creating a tantalum oxide film over that. The second "plate" is sulphuric acid, so in the event the oxide layer (dielectric ) gets damaged (say by accidentally exceeding its breakdown voltage) the acid reoxides it effectively making it self healing. While the value might drift as a result, at least having a working cap could mean the difference between life and death in the aerospace industry.
Interesting, thanks!
Tantalums are used extensively for space applications. However, they are quite finicky and prone to shorting when failing, but luckily they tend to fail during the first few power cycles and are otherwise quite reliable if you take care to not stress them with fast discharging or high voltage.
hmm, kind of like electolytics where you use them if "anything goes", only the competing factor here is reliability instead of price
Very good presentation. For ceramic capacitors there are two classes of dielectric, (1 & 2 of course), which present different characteristics, price, volume/capacitance, voltage offset, piezoelectricity, and such. Class 1 dielectrics are NP0 and C0G most commonly, and class 2 dielectrics include X7R, Y5V, etc.
Also, the wet-slug Tantalum capacitor is seldom the best choice for commercial applications, but in high-reliability, harsh environment, service they are usually indestructible (with no known failure mode when operated within ratings). They would be the kind of bulk capacitance you would find in space probes (Voyager, New Horizons, etc.) or military applications. I have some I use for bench testing that were made in 1976, and they still work fine.
Less so in mil applications now-a-days. Contemporary mil designs generally ban all wet dielectrics outright, at least for avionics.
@@jacobfaseler5311 We still use them quite a bit in space applications, usually for hold-up capacitance. As switch-mode power supply frequencies increase they are less useful as time goes by.
Relying in past investment makes Ceramic not obsolete. Stress areas? Polymer?
Switchboard table with duel polymer and Ceramic rerouted
Ripples
I’m only 8 minutes in and omg you’re excellent at explaining things clearly, precisely and without any waffle. 👏
Man, had the modern internet existed when I went to college for my engineering degree it would have been such a different experience. Content like this would have made things so much easier.
Fully fully agree. Just one vid so much intell.
@stellamcwick8455
So what preceded this "Modern Internet".?
I'm small town rural Australia, been connected since 1978. Access to University's and Library's on every continent.
"Content like this" drove the Internet into existence. All be it still images and pages of text, bbs and forums.
👉"A great deal of what we find, depends greatly on, what we are looking for."
@@snakezdewiggle6084 , to be clear Im referring to the ability to pull up videos and tutorials like this on my phone, not have to read it from some poorly written blogpost or BBS file.
Even in the 90’s when I went to school we only had dial-up. Great for BBS’s and low resolution blog posts but useless for any type of streaming and video media content.
Even when I was in school we didn’t have a LAN so to speak save for a coax token ring for printing. My only sources of information were the books we had for class, the library, or the instructors when you could schedule time with them, or one or two really shitty web 1.0 websites.
If i had been able to access the thousands of hours of commentary and videos that dealt with very specific topics and subjects I was struggling with, that discussed those topics from a multitude of viewpoints and levels of complexities from a multitude of cultural perspectives, I wouldn’t have struggled to understand those concepts nearly as much. College would have been far more fruitful.
I could have sent you a handful of the tantalums and saved you some money. I have thousands of old surplus caps. BTW, tantalum capacitors are also electrolytic capacitors, so you can think of electrolytic capacitors by their chemistry, as being either tantalum electrolytic or aluminum electrolytic. I note that these days a lot of people are calling aluminum electrolytic caps just 'electrolytic' capacitors, as if aluminum was the only sort of electrolytic capacitor in use. The electrolytically created dielectric is the reason both aluminum and tantalum dielectric caps are polarized. If they are installed backward the dielectric layer will be depleted until they short circuit between the plates.
Capacitors have so many other different parameters that may or may not be of importance in any specific application. From frequency handling ability, to absolute temperature handling, to capacity per size, that picking the best cap for the application becomes quite an engineering project, just as picking the best inductor for the job does as well. A video on picking the right inductor could go on for hours. Just the words to describe inductor parameters can run pages.
Another important but seldom considered characteristic of capacitors is the degree of sensitivity to microphonics. That has created problems in more than one product over the years. Some power caps are very subject to microphonics. After all, a 'condenser' microphone Is really just a capacitor. 100 years ago capacitors were all called 'condensers'. But as science learned more about the processes of electrons and fields they decided that 'condenser' wasn't a very good description of the device and changed the name to capacitor. The automotive industry was one of the last to call capacitors condensers, at least in old style spark distributors. In microphone audio, as noted, capacitor microphones are still being called 'condenser' mics.
BTW, capacitors used in power RF applications were not included in your video. AC and RF power capacitors are very different from DC power capacitors, and variable RF power capacitors are even more different.
I thought electret was the adopted term.
What does it mean to be susceptible to microphonics? Does that mean that air pressure waves can charge/discharge the caps?
Great video. I only know basic electronics and was wondering why there are so many different types of capacitors. You're explaining it all very well.
Man, this is pure gold! This is one I will be viewing more than once. Much appreciated! 👍🏻
My compliments. One of the best videos to the subject I ever saw. My old professor at Univ should have gone to school with you....
I love me a 40 minute video full of useful info about a single category of electronic components
I ordered my DER EE DE-5000 from Tokyo on September 1st 2024 for £100.44 with free postage and it arrived at my house on September 4th 2024.
It came without any leads, battery or English instruction manual.
I did a Google Search for the device and as Elektor didn't get a mention I settled on Ebay.
I get the Elektor Magazine and their Newsletter.
Absolutely no issues with VAT.
Such a good video! Straight to the points, no unnecessary fluff bullshit, explaining things that need to be explained, even sponsorship is absolutely spot on. I'd totally love if more of UA-cam was like this.
The only little I'd want to add is how electrolytic capacitors create their barrier between layers (IIRC something about electrolyte creating very thin oxide layer which serves as dielectric), but otherwise, wow. Thank you.
I sort of knew what each type of capacitor is good at but wanted to know what this video had to show. I must say I learnt a lot more... Thanks for the wonderful video. "film capacitor do what film capacitors do best - turning into inductors, and polycharge taking alternate route to uselessness" That was super hilarious :)
Ah thank you! I did have quite a bit of fun commenting on the graphs especially as it got to the later ones and the patterns were becoming clear
I use air-core capacitors in electronics quite often. They're invaluable in HF applications.
Yeah I meant power electronics my apologies. Certainly are used in other areas!
@@electrarc240 no worries. Appreciate the video. Thorough.
My favorite feature of electrolytic capacitors is the cross-shaped notches in the metal plate at the top. Designed to tear open apart and direct the explosion and boiling electrolyte away from the PCB, instead of spraying it all around, and also create a neat hole for the pressure to escape instead of sending shrapnel of the casing in all directions. Literally, them exploding is such an inherent trait they have a feature engineered in, to minimize adverse impact of the explosion.
It is a funny feature when you think of it that way. Small ones sometimes don’t have them so they are more exciting if *accidentally* reverse charged
Excellent. Loved your MOSFET video too. I hope to see this kind of video about every major Electronic component. Diodes will be a good candidate for the next video. There are so many variations of them.
Wow, it’s the best explanation of capacitors I’ve ever heard by far, I learned a lot in this video, you got a new fan on your channel!
Thanks for the hard work. Great video and useful information.
The only time I have had to replace wet tantalum capacitors is when I was repairing Fluke calibration equipment.
0:18 "We won't go into too much detail" *Looks at runtime of 42 minutes
But very good explanation though ;)
Excellent Insight. You. put alot into this. Thanks.
Yes it would be most interesting to your new proposal. .
Really great video! I enjoy the thorough explanation as I had to figure most of this out myself during my education. I also like that you test some equipment, because I am always on the look out for good meters that aren't the costing an arm and a leg.
Very informative! A lot of really good information here. It's amazing how capacitors have evolved over the course of my career in electronics. So many better choices today than back when I started in the field. We really haven't seen this kind of change with other passive components.
Yeah even I've been able to see some considerable improvements over my short time on this planet!
When comparing apples to apples, remember that each type has it's ideal use (which is why they are different), and so it will be hard to get an equal test output when trying to display results. Maybe show a graph where each type is used in it's natural environment. The comparison output, or result, would be, "As it is used typically." Kind of like competition racing. Drag cars, and 'bumper cars' (demolition derby) could be shown in a comparo, but they would have to be displayed and graphed in comparison to cars of their own type 'in circuit' (haha), and then correlated across in comparison.
Cool video. Good vocal articulation, excellent presentation, and I like the charts and stats, which can often say in 20 seconds what it takes 20 minutes to explain with words. ;):👍
Very Informative!! Can you also make some tutorials using Orcad ? I mean making schematic to designing PCB layout .
I use KiCad I’m afraid
@@electrarc240 No problem. Keep uploading the videos. Great stuff 🙌🙌
👍 I can only complain about hard to read graph colors, probably due to platform compression.
Also, perhaps a deeper dive to the explain the confusion between cap impedance and ESR.
Yeah a shorter video on just that topic is a good idea
@@electrarc240 Awesome work and appreciation for all the heavy lifting you've done already...your videos are by far the best on YT.
Hi fellow RBR fan!
I forgot to hide the merch haha
@@pallas_wept 👀
You are doing a nice job keep it up always bro,
You have got a bright future young man
The coolest capacitors i got to play around with were mica paper capapacitors used for military applications. They are quite small, high voltage and have an extremely low ESR. They work quite well for RF applications even though they are designed for pulse power applications ❤
You make great content.
Please please make video on inductor and transformer design for smps with practical
Here here I second that one
This should be doable, as my university has that as a second year project, so I already have a modular forward converter board I can use for demo!
@@electrarc240 You are making me very jealous - I wish I could go back to study electronics:) I teach physics and chemistry at the moment ( A Level ) and have a keen interest in electronics. You are a great teacher - very well paced, clear and concise in all your videos. I would suggest some kind of series where we can construct some breadboard projects with you - maybe even think about a patreon? I would 100% pay for some tuition on circuit design and understanding of schematics.
@@james5553 I think for the next year I won't have enough time for a Patreon due to work, but could possibly do a series like you suggest. I would certainly like to get more younger viewers as currently only around 5-10% are my age. But I would definitely like to do teaching in many forms after university. Thanks for the kind words!
Great video bravo !
Great video, thank's
Embedded systems engineer here, couple notes about capacitor ESR, been building my own SMPS (STM32-microcontroller) control board and it's currently running a low voltage buck topology practice board with a self-wound toroidal inductor and have gotten great experience from making the thing from scratch and learning along the way with all the programming for the ADC and PWM peripherals and probing the power board with an oscilloscope. Too little ESR can actually be bad in SMPS application, you actually want some, because it dampens the oscillations between the inductor and capacitors on the output. Had a slight ringing without any external extra resistor, but after adding a small series resistor to the big electrolytic on the output side, the big ringing calmed down, but then because of the added resistance I noticed an increase on the small signal AC voltage ripple, which makes sense as the capacitor can't dampen them as effectively with the increased ESR. So you can tune the output filtering either towards the large DC signal transient filtering with added ESR, or the faster small AC signal ripple with lower ESR. I hadn't ever internalized this before and will likely be adding a place for a series resistor for the bulk capacitors in the future.
In low power converters (
I may be wrong here but it sort of sounds like you're just turning a noise issue into a heat/loss issue, instead of solving the underlying problem. I have seen quite a bunch of converter circuits and I don't recall ever coming across a design that had a deliberately added series resistor for the bulk capacitors.
I don't know the details of your design, but if you have ringing at the output that suggests that your filtering may be insufficient or you may have flaws in your design, such as too high parasitic inductances in critical current loops. Instead of adding a resistor you may want to try tweaking the layout or adding smaller capacitors parallel to the bulk capacitors. Or whatever other thing you can do to reduce the ringing without just turning the noise into heat in a resistor.
@user-td3yi1mq7p hahaha I completely missed the part at the top where he's working with a buck converter, I was under the impression he was working on a flyback topology. I agree with you, he's using RC filtering on his output to compensate for some sort of noise issue elsewhere in the design. Like you suggest it's likely he's missing the notion that bulk smoothing capacitance isn't effective for high frequency bypassing, the addition of a low esr bypass cap is probably the missing piece. It's also possible that his pwm methodology is introducing a lot of harmonics, since it sounds like he programmed his own controller, it's also unclear if he's got any current compensation.
I remember this confusing me the first time I was using one of Ti's regulators with D-CAP, you need to use relatively high ESR capacitors for those.
Thanks
Thanks
The graphics are very illustrative. Great job.
Greattings from Argentina.
SUB-BLOODY-SCRIBED!!! And how the hell have i only stumbled across you now?!!
Appreciate you devoting so much effort to making these videos, really interesting stuff. I work with electronics and quite complicated appliances with some unusual power systems as part of my job. That said, compared to many of my colleagues who are very experienced qualified electronics engineers, I often feel like the idiot holding the soldering iron by the hot end then wondering what the burning smell is. 😅
I'm finding your videos particularly useful as revision guides, explainers and deep dives; after the algorithm recommended your PSU component explainer to me I quickly watched all of them!
Once again, really interesting subject material, about topics relevant to my work and hobbies, so they're also very useful reference guides. Enjoy the delivery and editing too 🙂👍 Looking forward to future videos. 🍻
So nice thanks sir
Thanks!
You got my Sub! Keep up the good work! 😃💥👍🌋⚡🔋
Eagerly waiting for your videos
loving the videos recently
Loving the viewers recently
Nice stuff...
I was dealing with audio electronics a while back as work and now back to hobby.
I always place very high quality capacitors on the board, and especially very high grade small capacitors right next to the load. Like DAC chips and opamp chips.
Polymer electrolytic (used to be Sanyo OS-CON)/ceramic for digital circuits, good old Elna Silmic II and Nichicon KZ/UKZ for the analog section. While these are significantly more expensive than the cheapest commodity grade stuff from the same manufacturers, they are still quite cheap for the difference they make and the overall cost of the end product.
Just recapped a Nikko Alpha 230 power amp recently, was surprised to find out have 1uf/100V bypass caps on the power output transistors stage. Upgraded them to 10uF/100V with the caps I have in my drawer. Managed to upgrade most except for the bipolar electrolytic and the two big filter caps.
Lots of fun....
Very cool ..!! Thank You for sharing all that hard work .. Cheers :)
excellent explanation
Nice video! Would be interesting to include a capacitor meant for hifi speaker filters, like Jantzen or Mundorf.
I only knew TDK for their cassette tapes from back in the day, until now ^^
My dad said the same when I mentioned them to him!
You should make a video about ceramics and their differences and their terrible capacitance over voltage change
I think I will at some point
Nice video keep it up
Only 30k subs? Why? Impressive work!!
I'm interested in learning more about the effects of ESR and how it's accounted for in designs. I know, for example, that ESR is calculated in analog circuits that include a lot of DC restoration or waveform demodulation.
Congratulations! This is a Master's Dissertation right there presented in 42 minutes. You ought to publish this in book form and make it easy for all of us. Thanks for making this, and yes, I'm interested in more info on the topic.
Awesome video.
That "aircore" cap could have also been a variable cap used in an old radio tuner. Good video....strange story but once I used some defibrillator caps to build a flashlamp pumped laser.
Yeah it was I have quite a few air core caps I use for demonstrations like this, they are definitely the best for showing the simple parallel plate concept
Great presentation! Thanks. You didn't, however, cover supercapacitors or ultracapacitors. Is it because they are not used in power electronics?
For nice cutaway views of capacitors and many other electronic components you will enjoy "Open Circuits" - a fantastic coffee table book by Eric Schlaepfer and Windsor H. Oskay.
Already have it! Beautiful 😍
Thank your this analysis. I would really be interested in large capacity formats 1 farad or larger.
Did you consider the DC bias dependency of the ceramic caps when calculating energy density?
No, it’s quite hard data to find and the Keysight LCR meter I used didn’t have a HV bias option installed so I couldn’t test myself. I admit that may have skewed the data somewhat it’s a good point I hadn’t really considered. Thanks
@@electrarc240 Sometimes it's in the data sheet. From what I have seen, many ceramic caps drop down to only 20% of their listed capacitance at max voltage. I also noticed this when I did some measurements on a board with only ceramic caps and was wondering why the resonance frequency was lower than expected.
So glad i found you! Im restoring 50's Telefunken tube-amp stereo and i want to use an interesting cap to filter the input power. Can i go foil? Do foils come with a ground?
On the film capacitors, it seems possible that since the dielectric is both mechanical and flexible it may vibrate at lower frequencies and show effects caused by the resonance of these vibrations. Maybe?
@ElectrArc240, thanks for the great video!
Great Video!
In-depth on reliability would be excellent…
Reliability testing is quite interesting too, how companies over stress components and extrapolate the results to guesstimate the lifetime on the datasheet, sometimes 100k hours+. Definitely not the most accurate numbers on datasheets lol
What about super/ultra capacitors? Nice video BTW, good stuff.
They're weird... don't really know much about them tbh, but would be a good think to look into at some point for sure
min 27:36 you can see that TDK and KEMET have the same weird QUALITY FACTOR response, only in a different scale. They have the same peaks at the same time.
I, umm, kinda hate to be the one to point this out now, after the fact, but you know that instead of a fancy PCB and everything, you could have just, well, _soldered a wire_ across each of the pairs of pins on those 4-pin capacitors, right?
Seriously great video, though. Some of those graphs are absolutely spectacular at demonstrating really well the differences between all these different types, and why you might want to pick one over another for a particular application. I don't think I've ever seen anything else that did such a good job of explaining it.
The inductance would make a difference for those DC link capacitors even though it is only a few nH. By overlapping the DC plains of the PCB this can be reduced a lot. Thanks a lot!!
Total layman here but I suspect the two spikes in the lower frequencies are related to resonance along the length and width of the film. Being such low frequencies, I'd even suspect a physical wave due to charge repulsion/attraction to travel through the film, modulating its capacitance. Just guesses. Feel free to rip me apart ;)
Piezoelectric stuff is my guess.
And no. 5 in the thumbnail is actually two tantalums in parallel and spot welded.
I am a total neophyte about this, but I appreciate the glimpse into how much more complex things are that I thought - but I should have known they are.
For audio filters, it would be great to see how bypass caps change things, and whether the main cap and the bypass cap "should" be the same type? I had thought (before watching this video) that smaller caps have lower ESR than larger ones; and that this was why bypass caps are used - but obviously the bypass cap is not lowering the ESR?
If the two are connected in parallel then the smaller cap will have better performance at higher frequencies. While big caps have low ESR they also tend to have more inductance and therefore are less effective at higher frequencies. A mix of several sizes and types is ideal
@@electrarc240 Thanks - it is the more extended treble that comes with using a bypass, that is great. And I would expect the the net ESR is reduced from the parallel caps? I also wonder if audio signal has enough current to significantly heat the caps - and I would suspect that parallel cabs would reduce the heating and/or increase heat dissipation, and improve performance, over a longer time?
@@NeilBlanchard I think apart from class D, capacitors in audio amps probably don't even break a sweat!
@@electrarc240 Okay - and probably the same for crossover caps?
I’d imagine so yeah
2:24 wait, what? What kinds? Can you share more about this?
I believe it is mostly due to an effect called dielectric absorption where the capacitor basically has a memory so if it is charged up for a long time at say 1kV then you discharge it and leave it, it may charge back up to 100-200V over time. tbh I don't really understand it but I know large film capacitors should always be left with a shorting link to prevent this
Weird... I guess it makes sense I've never heard of this, since I usually play with low power electronics.
I repaired an old boss me-10 ss effects pedal for guitar. They bought a bad batch of sanyos that year and every cap in every unit that year died just out of warranty. The 100uf decoupling smd electrolytic caps all reek so bad that I could only remove a few at a time or the wife went nuts because of the stink haha
The hidden Bode plot lesson
Congrats on finding it 😉
Capacitor _identity crisis..._ Love this video!
My dad got me a massive 10000uF (10mF) cap at Fry's Electronics once. It was fun to play with. If you touched a wire to both the leads it would spark. (It was only 5v iirc so not that big of a deal)
I dreamt about getting 100 of those together in the same place and making a 1 farad capacitor bank
Sounds like a great dad!
Very cool my friend 👍🇮🇪🙏
What i want to know is how switching capacitors of the same rated spec would sound differently in an audio amplifier.
Is it because of the discharge speed?
----II----...This Video Pushed my Capacity...
(11:46) Film, capasitors? Like what is seen in some household/industrial fans? (INDFLRF)
EDIT: (12:22) I have one that I took apart to se how it works. Looks exactly as described.
EDIT2: (24:01) So, this is what I popped on my AMD Saphire Video Card. Wondering of alternatives then since not an IC as I thought initially.
I'm 52, just starting out in electronics and I won't lie, this video just made my eyes glaze over. You need to break it down fir me like "Barney the dinosaur" style. 😊
Don't worry as you build up knowledge this sort of stuff will start to make sense
I'm with you this video is for engineers.
How much did your measurements differ with the $10,000 Keysight tester?
That’s what I was using as my reference for the DER one. It was calibrated fairly recently so I think it’s safe to assume it’s accurate enough
Do you have a link for where you bought the caps please
All are from Mouser except the PolyCharge which I'm afraid you can't buy
You really need a way to measure these capacitors with a DC bias. Many ceramic capacitors capacitance drops off drastically when a DC voltage is applied. Sometimes you only get 20% of the rated capacitance near their rated voltage. Also, some capacitors will act as a microphone. Not a nice behavior in a loud environment.
Yeah I'll look into it for sure
Huge thanks! I love everything about caps. But what the hell is going on with colors?)) 3 blacks, 2 yellows) why?) i cant differentiate)😂
Ahh sorry! I never originally intended to show them all together so I matched the lines to the colour of the caps. Then when I did combine them all I couldn't really think of a good way to differentiate them, though now something like using a dashed line seems obvious...
They are very easy to purchase and replace. I have never paid for such service. I purchase them on a schedule so I’m almost never caught out waiting for a part.
An electrolytic capacitor next to any resistor is basically a time bomb for smoke as anyone who works in electronics knows it's so insane to me how many consumer products have this flaw still
Hello. I have an ongoing backyard project which requires for the electronics I build to operate in high humidity environments. I have had success with tantalum capacitors so far, but they can get expensive and I want higher capacitance. Normal electrolytic caps don't maintain their values due to humidity. Luckily, I only need to operate at 12 V, or I wouldn't be able to use tantalum caps either. I've not tried polymer capacitors because I'm a perma-noob and haven't heard of them. Do you know if they're any good for humid environments? Are any of the others? Thank you in advance!
Have you considered using a hermetic case for your PCB? That way, you wouldn’t have to worry about selecting components that can handle extreme conditions.
The electrolytic capacitor in heat pumps is often a single point of failure. While that's really helpful for the HVAC guy's swimming pool and boat payments, the labour for this simple replacement is ridiculous for the homeowner. Can you recommend a different replacement type that will be more robust and do the business? 73 DE W8LV BILL
You'd probably want to use proper polypropylene metallized film capacitors for that. If you get some quality ones from Kemet, Vishay or similarly reputable source rated at 10k hours they'll last for a very long time. They're self healing and capacitor lifespan is rated at their max temperature so at slightly elevated ambient temperatures those 10k hours look more like 20+ years.
appreciate
Plasma TVs are a good power electronics demo I would have thought, if you can figure that out 😅
Stupid question , but wouldn't electrolytic capacitors also be considered to be hermetically sealed? Until the top pops off that is . Im asking because it seems like the tantalums are more expensive in part because they are sealed. But maybe hermetically sealed in this case is more than just "sealed" haha, but the fact that they need the pressure release caps made me think that wet electrolytic are actually air tight.
I think hermetically sealed is more than just "air tight", but not gonna lie I'm not an expert. Spoke to someone at work who used to work at NASA and he said they are used a lot there but wasn't really sure why lol (for the small ones like this, the big ones have the outstanding energy density I mentioned)
electrolytic capacitors have vents so they can release some pressure without blowing out. Even the best vents are less than 100% sealed. Not all cap vents are the best either. The slits are for catastrophic failures. When the vent isn't cutting it. Electrolytic capacitors are ongoing disasters basically. There's two kinds of electrolytic caps, ones that have failed and ones that have yet to fail.
For a while I was like, what on earth are these para-electronics he keeps talking about 😅 before he got to the Hz of mains, and I finally realized he was saying "power electronics" 😂
Well done very interesting The differences between them can be huge. What capacitor would you suggest for collecting maximum back EMF from a motor coil to be reused again? Into another drive coil in parallel with a capacitor
Do you want to store the energy from the first motor or just smooth it for the second?
@@electrarc240 thank you for the reply. I want to make a axial flux motor that reuses the back EMF drive coils to another set of outer coils instantaneously timed to the outer coils for additional free torque from the back EMF. It should result in a really efficient motor if I can find the right UF AC capacitor.
@@gregstafford2155 Drawing current from the back EMF results in negative torque to will slow the motor down / make it harder to turn, most brushless motors are already 90% efficient or more so there's not a lot of room for improvement sadly.
@@electrarc240I've already proven it works with pulse motors on a small scale. Motor speeds up when I reuse the back EMF into another coil with no additional input. it's going to be a pulsed triggered motor using optical or hall sensor. Just need the correct capacitor for the backing MF coils but I think I can work it out now with experimentation thanks anyway
@@gregstafford2155 Sounds interesting, best of luck!
Provocatively asking: As long as metallized paper and PIO are still sometimes specified out of habit, do they not belong in such a discussion?
Is the film cap reacting to wifi or or ...? In a test in remote location remember to turn your phone off also.
Anyway, if the cause can be determined, it might be useful in some unexpected way.
What about three-terminal ceramic capacitors?
Not really power electronics, at least in an energy storage sense. But good for filtering
Those wobbles in the film could be microfcany.( no idea how to spell that).
It's kind of in the audio bandwidth, were you listening to music when you did the measurements?.
If it was the capacitor plates acting as a microphone , it would be surprising, as I seem to remember film capacitors were all the good in that respect, and the high value ceramics we're lousy.
PS fantastic video
9 minutes in and only now i figured this video is not about the power electronics music genre
😓
30:45 why not just a piece of thick wire? The inductance shouldn´t be too bad compared to a pcb. But the pins will be internally connected anyway, so it probably does not matter at all. The biggest purpose of the four pins is mechanical stability.
I wanted the best possible inductance, and an interleaved "laminate busbar style" PCB would be best. As you say perhaps it wouldn't make all that much difference. The PCB has now arrived and will work for the film cap so I may see what effect, if any, it has