In 1999 I was an intern in a household appliance repair workshop. There was a guy who came back regularly for replacing windings in his circular saw motor. When he brought it for the third time our foreman took the motor in and told the guy to bring the capacitor for checking. The guy reluctantly brought it, saying that he checked it and all was OK. When the guy brought the capacitor, foreman connected it directly to AC socket that had 15A meter in series (and some fuse), they waited for half a minute. The guy started saying: "see, told you it…" and suddenly the amp meter started maxing out intermittently, and some fireworks appeared. The capacitor was busted, now "for sure", with burn marks. Foreman took a new capacitor from a shelf, added it to the third-time-fixed motor, and told the guy: "You already paid for it". Fun times :)
This reminds me when we bought a flat the big fan in the roof space didn't work. After watching a few of your videos i replaced the big capacitor and it started working again, saved me having to fork out for a new inline fan
@@quantumbuddhist Depends on the size of the fan. US Air Conditioners almost always have start/run capacitors on the exterior unit. When torque isn't a concern "shaded pole" motors are cheaper. Which is what you're probably thinking of for ceiling fans and other small fans.
After seeing so many videos of how badly parcels are treated, it's hardly a surprise this one was obliterated. Nice autopsy of the capacitor - In times gone by, I did the same to several busted old capacitors, just for fun 🙂
I believe if instruction manuals were narrated by this gentleman there'd be a much greater uptake of information contained in them. einstructions by Clive
You talking about the inrush current reminds me of my high school back in the late nineties. After a big renovation of the building we also ended up with new computer rooms, which had 30 computers each. Near the door was an electrical panel with two buttons allowing a teacher to (de)energize all the outlets in the room. You can probably imagine how quickly they learned to not use that button to switch on 30 CRT monitors at once after tripping the main breaker a couple of times :D
I heard a similar story about a school I once worked at. They did just that and heard a loud bang eminating from the hallway, where a fuse had a very violent untimely death.
My first experience with power factor correction capacitors was during my CEGB student apprenticeship. I was spending a month with South Wales Electricity Board for area board training and accompanied the team who were trying to find out why a whole section of newly installed Sodium street lights had failed. They didn't have a clue until I noticed that the capacitors had all been connected to the secondary of the step-up transformers and exceeded their working voltage. I was not very impressed with the area board (for many reasons) and was glad to get back to the power station.
Thanks big clive - very interesting. I am retired now but I worked in electronics for a long time, during which I saw (and used) self-healing capacitors many times but never knew what that really meant or how they worked - until now! 👌
When replacing degraded dropper/motor run/etc. caps always go up in voltage if you have the space for it and don't want a repeat, the stronger you can make the dielectric the longer it will take to degrade out of tolerance. Ideally sourced from an actual industrial/electronics supplier or local hardware store (if you have one nearby cool enough to sell electric motor parts), not a random brand ebay/amazon/ali part. Like I don't expect further trouble from the furnace blower as I went from 370V to 440V and went to the trouble to source a reputable part.
Might be Chinese fakes they would not pass as flame retardant Note helped a guy who sold capacitors and went through hundreds of kg every month saw a number of that DNA brand from over the counter sales for the locals which had failed and all were epoxy filled.
I know you didn’t ask, but if I were you I would still tell the seller that it arrived damaged. You can explain you’re not upset and are not looking for a refund, but it could still be good feedback for the seller, in case they sell to someone who will care and it will end up costing them even more money to replace or refund than it would have to pack it more carefully.
I bought a magnifier once over eBay, the thing arrived in working order but the inside packing was very poor and you could hear the thing rattle if you shook the box. I didn't return it since it worked but notified the shipper like you said. He was grateful for the feedback and sent me another magnifier anyway. Got gifted to a co-worker. 😊
ebay really screws the seller in the case of problems, i've been selling since i was 13 and they have made me buy my own items back+shipping numerous times because the buyer complained for example, a "basement find nintendo, dirt included" dirt included literally in the title of the auction and they filed a complaint that it was more dirty than they thought it would be
Heavy things are not that hard to ship, but people don't seem to realize the packaging needs to not only cushion the heavy thing, but take up ALL the extra room so it's not rattling around in the box. Also using a good sturdy box, or even 2 layers of box together on the outside makes a huge difference. When you shake the whole package, nothing should move or rattle. Then it has a good chance of making it undamaged to the other side
"She's got big hands!". "And all Glittery too!" 😉😆 Made one of these. Crisps Packets (mylar) + Typewriter Duplicate Carbon Paper. Worked great in RF projects, ie, it was stable enough to be predictable.
You say about the tumble dryer. I had very slow spin up, and humming whilst starting, I had a google search a few months ago, wisdom from the forum was that when those caps go, they spit their guts out or let the smoke out not just diminished capacity. I tested mine 5uF cap, 1.3uF on the LCR meter. Bought a new one off ebay, works a treat. Three forums i went to all said best to buy a new motor, wouldn't have fixed my issue anyways and new motor was more than $200 vs the $13 cap off ebay.
I had heard the idea of self healing in polyfilm capacitors, but somehow I never got round to studying what that meant. Sorta like myself, blow out a bit somewhere and it heals but is evermore lowered capacity. Got chunks of film blown out all over these days. Takes many strikes for the light to come on solid during a nippy morning. There is a sodium vapor lamp on the pole out back that was out for several years and I never complained because it was supplied by the utility provider, and wasnt charged to my bill. Well they sent a man out to replace the one out front with an LED and it didnt work. I got to looking and realised the one in back had the wire disconnected from the supply that went on to the next pole which had the new LED on it. Turns out the neighbor was paying for both and had them come back out to restore the connection. Comical that the dude changed out that fixture and didnt bother to go to the next pole and fix the connection so it would work. So the much more useful ~ 2700K LED then worked but the old orange sodium vapor would cycle all night and then, why wouldnt he change that 26+ year old sodium vapor for a new led with much better color and double efficiency while there? It took about a month, but the Sodium vapor came back around and now works as expected? Was surprized at that because the older metal halides, once they start cycling on too much current, too hot, they only get worse. Ever had the desire to get a BIG roll of mylar and a big roll of aluminium and make a BIG capacitor? My dad showed me an article when I was a kid about an experimental megacapacitor built in a lake, been dreaming of what you could do with a hazardously large cap ever since. Capture a lightning bolt? If the leakage could be designed low enough, a single, decent sized lightning bolt would power my home for the rest of my lifetime. Well I never had a large enough property on which to store that cap comfortably far enough away from the house to reasonably account for the unexpected effects of intentionally coaxing a lightning bolt to discharge to right here, approximately.Turns out the neighbors get suspicious when lightning bolts hit too close, too often. Appropriately sized diodes and spark gap shunting of excess are no small task either. Might as well dig a sand pit and charge that with aluminum powder to sell fulgarites on ebay, should all else fail. Prolly a good thing I never had much mad money....
Many times I would wind a rope or cord around the shaft of a motor or machine. With the power on I'd "pull start" it. That'd get it going while I was off to get another capacitor. It's a fun trick to do in front of the customer!
My electric cement mixer would sometimes not start on the switch. Checked everything and found the big capacitor was down on the ohms reading.. I replaced it with a slightly higher value replacement and it has worked perfectly ever since.
@@airgunnut sometimes so much so that you dont even realize you HAVE a cut for minutes until it starts to sting and you notice a drop of blood on the table
@@frogz yup! I've had to inspect my fingers for a tiny nick to find where the red smears are coming from due to razor sharp blades. The cuts have been so clean that a few minutes of pressure and they glue them selves shut. Blunt blades take too much force to cut and slide off too fast, raggedly stabbing into any thing nearby.
Another excellent Big Clive video! What did want from a 250w ballast. FYI we have several now defunct 400w ones laying around going to the scrap bin at work.
I like that Clive fuses in streetlights, many years ago we used to repair streetlights on trunk roads where sections had gone out and blew the fuse in the feeder pillar, you would normally find a cut out on a column with a blown bs 88 fuse and someone had repaired it in the past who didn’t have any fuses and had wrapped a piece of earth from some twin and earth around it, it used to drive my mate mad. Sometimes we would bang a bigger fuse in the feeder pillar override the clock so the contactors pulled in and let the faulty streetlight blow its gear tray too bits to save us time. It was quite spectacular some times 😂😂😂
Yeah. The street light industry in the UK tends to use minimally trained labour who pick up all the wrong electrical knowledge from other labourers. And that includes wrapping wire around HRC fuses.
Lol, I guess they must have huge stock of that large casing size and it was cheaper to use it with that filler being the cheapest option to make it somewhat solid construction.
I believe X2 capacitors have a slightly different failure mode than normal capacitors, I think, based on the choice of dielectric material.They absorb over voltage spikes which puncture the dielectric but are designed to short the layers. Obviously the capacitance will lower but eventually they can short the supply blowing a protection fuse as an indication of failure. Y type capacitors are designed to fail open-circuit as if they were to go short they could potentially connect a live supply to an isolated piece of metalwork causing a shock hazard. Therefore X2 capacitors should never be used to replace Y capacitors although the other way round poses no problems except never knowing if they've failed without measuring them. The infamous Rifa X2 caps in old equipment have a further failure mode, although unintentional, by the outer epoxy coating cracking and allowing moisture ingress which causes sudden shorts and vaporisation of the internals in an explosive and often very smelly and smokey manners 😉
@@andygozzo72 In Australia we also had AEE Miniprint which were pretty much the same (and at least the X class even had the same series code as RIFA). The claimed advantage is better self-healing than plastic film, but we all know they were searching for any excuse to keep making paper capacitors. Incidentally I have three polypropylene RIFA PFC caps from disintegrated old fluorescent battens (2×2.8μF from single 40W fittings, and 1×6μF from a twin 40W) which still measure spot on; that's more than I can say for the Plessey caps (originally 20μF, down to ≈5μF) from the 400W MV fittings I put in their place (I got them cheaply and don't run them long enough to worry about the power consumption). But the fact alone that they still make the paper types is, in my book, enough reason to choose other makers first.
This is indeed a commonly claimed property of X and Y capacitors but I've never been able to find any statement from the manufacturers that it is true.
Your comment about the failed capacitors causing relays to click is useful to me as my mom's quilting iron (an expensive Oliso) that has retractable feet in regular operation has stopped pulling the feet up with the distinct repeating servo click. Changing a capacitor is easy and the first thing I'll try instead of attacking it from the servo right away. I just hope it's not the safety capacitive touch sensor on the handle, I wouldn't know where to get it or how to replace it.
It could be based on a conventional switching power supply, in which case it would most likely be the secondary side capacitor going high impedance. Especially if the clicking is accompanied by the indicator lights blinking in sync.
Totally destroyed in a good way: “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!” ― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
I bought one of these motor capacitors from fartnell. Much pricier than some budget brand, but it does come with a proper datasheet, and I think these will last much longer.
I've just had to replace the 4uF capacitor across the motor of my dishwashers water circulation pump as sometimes the pump would not run and the dishes stayed dirty. The little electronic component tester I have said it was down to 1.25uF. After what you said about the foil breakdown I wondered if that is what had happened to this and then you mentioned a tumble dryer motors capacitor. Now I know.
Yep, I have replaced a few X2 caps in PIR motion sensor lights for that exact reason. First the sensitivity and ambient light level setting drifted up to the point of not doing much anymore, than the lamps started triggering randomly, in the end they never turned on at all any more (the whole process took several month). I opened the caps out of interest and the metal film looked like it had been eaten by some woodworms.
Great information Big Clive! Thanks! I have seen inverters, etc, with modified sine wave destroy the X2 capacitors in some capacitive dropper devices, and I guess that is what is happening with those also?
An interesting fail mode for old cans is short circuit with low resistance readings, this happened recently in an old compressor that refused to start, turns out the old can was dated 1977!
I had, years ago, hundreds of photos of motor run capacitors I'd autopsied where the self-healing effect had produced snail-tracks meandering across the metallization, isolating significant areas of the electrodes from the end terminals, resulting in their low capacitance. A very messy job.
When I was a kid I used to pull parts out of scrapped TV sets. All tubes (or what you might call "valves" :-) and the common capacitors were a paper dielectric, and they were dipped in wax. I got curious as to what was in them, and it wasn't too much work to scrape off the wax and extract the innards, which were then unrolled. Somewhere around here I have a picture snagged off the net showing a woman seated at a capacitor rolling machine, presumably used to make those back in the day...
The resistor should be a special type with higher than normal voltage rating. People sometimes put normal MR25 resistors across the 230 V RMS power and they will live, for a while. VR25 are the same power but much higher limiting voltage and will live! Take care!
My experience with these poly capacitors incrementally failing is on solar inverters. The caps filter noise from the IGBT's switching to help meet noise limits, etc. on the output. I have an output power monitor that happens to record in sub-minute intervals so I can see when the inverter drops out from one of the internal shorting events, then reboots. At some point the capacitance drops so low that the internal inverter noise and powerfactor monitors say "tilt" then no more power. This corresponds to an out of circuit measurement shift from microF to nanoF, or less. A new cap fixes the problem, and as a side note, I have never had a failed IGBT or FET.
Do you mean a commercial tumble dryer? Of the ones we have here on the "other side of the pond" use motors very similar to the ones in the top-loading washing machines so they may have a capacitor, but I think it's only for starting it. I could be wrong though as it's been a while since I had a 1/3 hp laundry motor, 120 or 240 V. Those motors are similar to what are seen in our furnaces/air handlers/central air conditioners, with the exception of the compressors of course, but you get the idea.
I think Dave Jones did an interview with a guy in capacitor manufacture who said these film capacitors are more likely to lose value due to moisture ingress? That stuff at the end...is that the schoopage you've mentioned earlier? EDIT: I should have kept watching; you confirm it at about 5:50.
I remember coming across that word in the spec for a capacitor which was written in French and having no idea what it meant. I was working for a large company but their foreign language translation department was unable to translate it. I didn't discover what it was until years later.
What is the current consumption on like a 20w cfl that "buzz" fails in a remote spot like an out building and draws for months but stays dark and you don't notice it and think it is off? -asking for a friend
I've had IR motion sensor, that turns the light on/off/on/off/on etc. and I know it would be easily repaired, but they're so cheap, that it's easier to just install a new one. Then the new one works longer, so it's a win.
I'm curious if capacitor drift could explain dimming over lifetime of LED bulbs. I notice on some bulbs that when I replace them the new bulb is noticeably brighter then the old. Some of that may just be "leds are being over driven and fade over time", but if they're based off a capacitive dropper then capacitance drift may be a large factor as well.
Question the resistor that goes across the terminal of the capacitor is that constantly discharging electricity while the unit is being used because I would think it would get hot from it just discharging constantly and not only when the unit is turned off
In my country VERY BAD cap will usually filled with half or very small cap) and even ANOTHER cap inside (for example 100000uF 50V with the inside are 4700uF 35V) for cheaper price and also filled with aspalt or wax. Mostly happen in Chinese cap or very cheap audio use cap
A few months ago, I had the misfortune to change capacitor in a tumbler drier, never again. You virtually have to dismantle the drier, that took two hours and resemble a macano kit, when dismantle, 5 minutes to install the capacitor, 3 hours to reassemble the drier. At my hourly rate , it's cheaper to buy a new tumbler drier and pay for the 5 year warranty.its not cost effective to just change the capacitor, you need to change drive belts , tension pulleys and bearings at the same time . At make sure you have a first aid kit , because of the sharp edges ,
Out of curiosity. Could you make a Graphine capacitor using ordinary sticky tape and pencil graphite? As for the damage to the electronics I'm wondering if the shape set off a pipe bomb detector inside a delivery company depot somewhere.
"Easy to fix". Except the last tumble dryer I fixed that issue on the Planned Obsolescence Department had thought of that and designed a dryer which was built by starting with the run capacitor and building the dryer around it. It eventually succumbed to the power screwdriver, lots of bad language and quite a few "one moment please" interludes.
In the late 90s I was kicked out of class because I had the heresy to suggest designing a simple device to disconnect the PFC capacitor(s) when no current was flowing through the reactor, explaining that when there were several burned out discharge lamps in a warehouse, because that was really common, the installation could end overcompensated enough to cause a power surge when powered by the emergency generator. Of course there's nothing to compensate when the burned bulb is in series with the reactor and the PFC capacitor is in parallel with the mains, but good luck trying to explain that to a moron with a teacher job. Fortunately for today's students, the same institute is now making money from various patents instead of kicking out students with ideas. And what had to be changed was not any student but 95% of the teaching staff who in many cases did not have the necessary studies... or none at all! but they could -teach- _work as teachers_ thanks to the loopholes, wormholes and a**holes of a system designed during a dictatorship that took a quarter of a century to be updated...
In 1999 I was an intern in a household appliance repair workshop. There was a guy who came back regularly for replacing windings in his circular saw motor. When he brought it for the third time our foreman took the motor in and told the guy to bring the capacitor for checking. The guy reluctantly brought it, saying that he checked it and all was OK. When the guy brought the capacitor, foreman connected it directly to AC socket that had 15A meter in series (and some fuse), they waited for half a minute. The guy started saying: "see, told you it…" and suddenly the amp meter started maxing out intermittently, and some fireworks appeared. The capacitor was busted, now "for sure", with burn marks. Foreman took a new capacitor from a shelf, added it to the third-time-fixed motor, and told the guy: "You already paid for it". Fun times :)
This reminds me when we bought a flat the big fan in the roof space didn't work. After watching a few of your videos i replaced the big capacitor and it started working again, saved me having to fork out for a new inline fan
Must be a start capacitor. We don't have these in states on home owner fans. But lots of industrial motors (compressors etc) we have them
Fixed my geriatric tumble dryer a while back, exactly as described. Nominal 8.3uF cap was down to 2uF 😮
@@quantumbuddhist Depends on the size of the fan. US Air Conditioners almost always have start/run capacitors on the exterior unit. When torque isn't a concern "shaded pole" motors are cheaper. Which is what you're probably thinking of for ceiling fans and other small fans.
@@arthurmoore9488 I have a small floor air circulator that uses a PSC motor. The cap motors are more efficient, which is good for the electric bill.
After seeing so many videos of how badly parcels are treated, it's hardly a surprise this one was obliterated.
Nice autopsy of the capacitor - In times gone by, I did the same to several busted old capacitors, just for fun 🙂
I love Big Clive's serene, calming voice. Good for bedtime stories!
What sort of bedtime stories do you want to listen to? What sort do you think he would provide?
Yes, but then he says: "I'll pause while I go deeper".
I watch bigclive cause he's interesting, but when I can't sleep I pop him on and I sleep like a baby
A lot of people use my videos to induce sleep.
I believe if instruction manuals were narrated by this gentleman there'd be a much greater uptake of information contained in them.
einstructions by Clive
You talking about the inrush current reminds me of my high school back in the late nineties. After a big renovation of the building we also ended up with new computer rooms, which had 30 computers each. Near the door was an electrical panel with two buttons allowing a teacher to (de)energize all the outlets in the room. You can probably imagine how quickly they learned to not use that button to switch on 30 CRT monitors at once after tripping the main breaker a couple of times :D
our teacher used to throw a fit and do that, big fat baby
I heard a similar story about a school I once worked at. They did just that and heard a loud bang eminating from the hallway, where a fuse had a very violent untimely death.
I've had that issue with the degaussing coils in a large array of monitors.
My first experience with power factor correction capacitors was during my CEGB student apprenticeship. I was spending a month with South Wales Electricity Board for area board training and accompanied the team who were trying to find out why a whole section of newly installed Sodium street lights had failed. They didn't have a clue until I noticed that the capacitors had all been connected to the secondary of the step-up transformers and exceeded their working voltage. I was not very impressed with the area board (for many reasons) and was glad to get back to the power station.
I wish more people were like you, seeing the positive instead of going mad and grumpy over inconsequential things...
Awesome teardown. Reminds me of the first time I took apart an electrolytic capacitor, but that was more messy.
Thanks big clive - very interesting. I am retired now but I worked in electronics for a long time, during which I saw (and used) self-healing capacitors many times but never knew what that really meant or how they worked - until now! 👌
Big Clive - Once again making the mundane simply fascinating!
When replacing degraded dropper/motor run/etc. caps always go up in voltage if you have the space for it and don't want a repeat, the stronger you can make the dielectric the longer it will take to degrade out of tolerance. Ideally sourced from an actual industrial/electronics supplier or local hardware store (if you have one nearby cool enough to sell electric motor parts), not a random brand ebay/amazon/ali part. Like I don't expect further trouble from the furnace blower as I went from 370V to 440V and went to the trouble to source a reputable part.
1997! I'm glad you tested how out of tolerance they were now 😅
the postal service did a proper number on that, good you want the parts and to the whole thing. thanks for the look inside the cap 2x👍
That's a first! Usually they are filled with tar or epoxy, sometimes wax.
Yeah. First time I've seen the styrofoam balls too. They must be faster and cheaper.
Might be Chinese fakes they would not pass as flame retardant Note helped a guy who sold capacitors and went through hundreds of kg every month saw a number of that DNA brand from over the counter sales for the locals which had failed and all were epoxy filled.
Who knew this thing had balls? Great capacitor autopsy sir!
Those weren't big balls, but yes.
I know you didn’t ask, but if I were you I would still tell the seller that it arrived damaged. You can explain you’re not upset and are not looking for a refund, but it could still be good feedback for the seller, in case they sell to someone who will care and it will end up costing them even more money to replace or refund than it would have to pack it more carefully.
I bought a magnifier once over eBay, the thing arrived in working order but the inside packing was very poor and you could hear the thing rattle if you shook the box. I didn't return it since it worked but notified the shipper like you said. He was grateful for the feedback and sent me another magnifier anyway. Got gifted to a co-worker. 😊
ebay really screws the seller in the case of problems, i've been selling since i was 13 and they have made me buy my own items back+shipping numerous times because the buyer complained
for example, a "basement find nintendo, dirt included" dirt included literally in the title of the auction and they filed a complaint that it was more dirty than they thought it would be
I do sometimes send pictures of how things arrived and make packaging suggestions.
Heavy things are not that hard to ship, but people don't seem to realize the packaging needs to not only cushion the heavy thing, but take up ALL the extra room so it's not rattling around in the box. Also using a good sturdy box, or even 2 layers of box together on the outside makes a huge difference. When you shake the whole package, nothing should move or rattle. Then it has a good chance of making it undamaged to the other side
I think shipping companies should pay for damaged packages.
This would force them to be more careful.
"She's got big hands!". "And all Glittery too!" 😉😆
Made one of these. Crisps Packets (mylar) + Typewriter Duplicate Carbon Paper. Worked great in RF projects, ie, it was stable enough to be predictable.
You say about the tumble dryer. I had very slow spin up, and humming whilst starting, I had a google search a few months ago, wisdom from the forum was that when those caps go, they spit their guts out or let the smoke out not just diminished capacity. I tested mine 5uF cap, 1.3uF on the LCR meter. Bought a new one off ebay, works a treat. Three forums i went to all said best to buy a new motor, wouldn't have fixed my issue anyways and new motor was more than $200 vs the $13 cap off ebay.
A pressure washer I was using failed. Investigating I found the aluminium clad motor start capacitor had a large bulge on one side.
I had heard the idea of self healing in polyfilm capacitors, but somehow I never got round to studying what that meant. Sorta like myself, blow out a bit somewhere and it heals but is evermore lowered capacity. Got chunks of film blown out all over these days. Takes many strikes for the light to come on solid during a nippy morning. There is a sodium vapor lamp on the pole out back that was out for several years and I never complained because it was supplied by the utility provider, and wasnt charged to my bill. Well they sent a man out to replace the one out front with an LED and it didnt work. I got to looking and realised the one in back had the wire disconnected from the supply that went on to the next pole which had the new LED on it. Turns out the neighbor was paying for both and had them come back out to restore the connection. Comical that the dude changed out that fixture and didnt bother to go to the next pole and fix the connection so it would work. So the much more useful ~ 2700K LED then worked but the old orange sodium vapor would cycle all night and then, why wouldnt he change that 26+ year old sodium vapor for a new led with much better color and double efficiency while there? It took about a month, but the Sodium vapor came back around and now works as expected?
Was surprized at that because the older metal halides, once they start cycling on too much current, too hot, they only get worse.
Ever had the desire to get a BIG roll of mylar and a big roll of aluminium and make a BIG capacitor? My dad showed me an article when I was a kid about an experimental megacapacitor built in a lake, been dreaming of what you could do with a hazardously large cap ever since. Capture a lightning bolt? If the leakage could be designed low enough, a single, decent sized lightning bolt would power my home for the rest of my lifetime. Well I never had a large enough property on which to store that cap comfortably far enough away from the house to reasonably account for the unexpected effects of intentionally coaxing a lightning bolt to discharge to right here, approximately.Turns out the neighbors get suspicious when lightning bolts hit too close, too often. Appropriately sized diodes and spark gap shunting of excess are no small task either. Might as well dig a sand pit and charge that with aluminum powder to sell fulgarites on ebay, should all else fail. Prolly a good thing I never had much mad money....
Many times I would wind a rope or cord around the shaft of a motor or machine. With the power on I'd "pull start" it. That'd get it going while I was off to get another capacitor. It's a fun trick to do in front of the customer!
Makes perfect sense. As long as it's just a starter cap, I don't see a problem.
Wow. Thanks again Big Clive. so cool to know.
My electric cement mixer would sometimes not start on the switch. Checked everything and found the big capacitor was down on the ohms reading.. I replaced it with a slightly higher value replacement and it has worked perfectly ever since.
A sharp blade is so much safer than a dull blade. If the blade is dull it will snag increasing the probability of a slip as you increase force on it.
also if the blade does slip, the cut is cleaner and heals better
@@airgunnut sometimes so much so that you dont even realize you HAVE a cut for minutes until it starts to sting and you notice a drop of blood on the table
A fact that is waisted on so many people. Cooking videos can be painful to listen too.
@@frogz yup! I've had to inspect my fingers for a tiny nick to find where the red smears are coming from due to razor sharp blades. The cuts have been so clean that a few minutes of pressure and they glue them selves shut. Blunt blades take too much force to cut and slide off too fast, raggedly stabbing into any thing nearby.
I'd wear chain mail covered by washing up gloves if I could.
Another excellent Big Clive video! What did want from a 250w ballast. FYI we have several now defunct 400w ones laying around going to the scrap bin at work.
I have hoarded many of these ballasts and starters, reliable old lamps
Thanks Clive.
I like that Clive fuses in streetlights, many years ago we used to repair streetlights on trunk roads where sections had gone out and blew the fuse in the feeder pillar, you would normally find a cut out on a column with a blown bs 88 fuse and someone had repaired it in the past who didn’t have any fuses and had wrapped a piece of earth from some twin and earth around it, it used to drive my mate mad. Sometimes we would bang a bigger fuse in the feeder pillar override the clock so the contactors pulled in and let the faulty streetlight blow its gear tray too bits to save us time. It was quite spectacular some times 😂😂😂
Yeah. The street light industry in the UK tends to use minimally trained labour who pick up all the wrong electrical knowledge from other labourers. And that includes wrapping wire around HRC fuses.
So they add the balls for more smoke and flames? 🤣
That did go through my mind.
Lol, I guess they must have huge stock of that large casing size and it was cheaper to use it with that filler being the cheapest option to make it somewhat solid construction.
I believe X2 capacitors have a slightly different failure mode than normal capacitors, I think, based on the choice of dielectric material.They absorb over voltage spikes which puncture the dielectric but are designed to short the layers. Obviously the capacitance will lower but eventually they can short the supply blowing a protection fuse as an indication of failure. Y type capacitors are designed to fail open-circuit as if they were to go short they could potentially connect a live supply to an isolated piece of metalwork causing a shock hazard. Therefore X2 capacitors should never be used to replace Y capacitors although the other way round poses no problems except never knowing if they've failed without measuring them.
The infamous Rifa X2 caps in old equipment have a further failure mode, although unintentional, by the outer epoxy coating cracking and allowing moisture ingress which causes sudden shorts and vaporisation of the internals in an explosive and often very smelly and smokey manners 😉
thing is RIFA still make those caps using paper dielectric!
@@andygozzo72 In Australia we also had AEE Miniprint which were pretty much the same (and at least the X class even had the same series code as RIFA). The claimed advantage is better self-healing than plastic film, but we all know they were searching for any excuse to keep making paper capacitors. Incidentally I have three polypropylene RIFA PFC caps from disintegrated old fluorescent battens (2×2.8μF from single 40W fittings, and 1×6μF from a twin 40W) which still measure spot on; that's more than I can say for the Plessey caps (originally 20μF, down to ≈5μF) from the 400W MV fittings I put in their place (I got them cheaply and don't run them long enough to worry about the power consumption). But the fact alone that they still make the paper types is, in my book, enough reason to choose other makers first.
This is indeed a commonly claimed property of X and Y capacitors but I've never been able to find any statement from the manufacturers that it is true.
@@andygozzo72 RIFA just claim theirs are flameproof. They certainly aren't smoke and stink proof as I found our when one failed in a vacuum cleaner.
@@MrDuncl oh yeah, i had one 'let off' when i was testing a mac2cx!!
The wire stripper-glitter...
Your comment about the failed capacitors causing relays to click is useful to me as my mom's quilting iron (an expensive Oliso) that has retractable feet in regular operation has stopped pulling the feet up with the distinct repeating servo click. Changing a capacitor is easy and the first thing I'll try instead of attacking it from the servo right away. I just hope it's not the safety capacitive touch sensor on the handle, I wouldn't know where to get it or how to replace it.
It could be based on a conventional switching power supply, in which case it would most likely be the secondary side capacitor going high impedance. Especially if the clicking is accompanied by the indicator lights blinking in sync.
Totally destroyed in a good way:
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
Bad craziness ...
I bought one of these motor capacitors from fartnell. Much pricier than some budget brand, but it does come with a proper datasheet, and I think these will last much longer.
Are the polystyrene balls to stop or dampen the humming/ buzzing when the power is on?
Probably just cheap impact absorbing filler.
I’d love to see a series about consumer electronics diagnosis and repair from basic to complex. The process!
It's good when the sacrifice of others (equipment) teaches us stuff. It's good I tellz ya!
Those capacitors really have some balls.
Great joke, Dad! 😆
I've just had to replace the 4uF capacitor across the motor of my dishwashers water circulation pump as sometimes the pump would not run and the dishes stayed dirty. The little electronic component tester I have said it was down to 1.25uF. After what you said about the foil breakdown I wondered if that is what had happened to this and then you mentioned a tumble dryer motors capacitor. Now I know.
Thank you. Keep the videos coming. Glen M
Yep, I have replaced a few X2 caps in PIR motion sensor lights for that exact reason. First the sensitivity and ambient light level setting drifted up to the point of not doing much anymore, than the lamps started triggering randomly, in the end they never turned on at all any more (the whole process took several month). I opened the caps out of interest and the metal film looked like it had been eaten by some woodworms.
Thank you for your videos I've learned a lot
Great information Big Clive! Thanks! I have seen inverters, etc, with modified sine wave destroy the X2 capacitors in some capacitive dropper devices, and I guess that is what is happening with those also?
Yeah, the jagged waveform results in high current spikes.
I hope you share what you do with the inductor =D
I have replaced those capacitors on ceiling fans. When the fan is old it takes longer to get up to speed and the humming noise is louder.
Yeah. Very common failure in ceiling fans.
An interesting fail mode for old cans is short circuit with low resistance readings, this happened recently in an old compressor that refused to start, turns out the old can was dated 1977!
I had, years ago, hundreds of photos of motor run capacitors I'd autopsied where the self-healing effect had produced snail-tracks meandering across the metallization, isolating significant areas of the electrodes from the end terminals, resulting in their low capacitance. A very messy job.
When I was a kid I used to pull parts out of scrapped TV sets. All tubes (or what you might call "valves" :-) and the common capacitors were a paper dielectric, and they were dipped in wax. I got curious as to what was in them, and it wasn't too much work to scrape off the wax and extract the innards, which were then unrolled. Somewhere around here I have a picture snagged off the net showing a woman seated at a capacitor rolling machine, presumably used to make those back in the day...
The resistor should be a special type with higher than normal voltage rating. People sometimes put normal MR25 resistors across the 230 V RMS power and they will live, for a while. VR25 are the same power but much higher limiting voltage and will live! Take care!
My experience with these poly capacitors incrementally failing is on solar inverters. The caps filter noise from the IGBT's switching to help meet noise limits, etc. on the output. I have an output power monitor that happens to record in sub-minute intervals so I can see when the inverter drops out from one of the internal shorting events, then reboots. At some point the capacitance drops so low that the internal inverter noise and powerfactor monitors say "tilt" then no more power. This corresponds to an out of circuit measurement shift from microF to nanoF, or less. A new cap fixes the problem, and as a side note, I have never had a failed IGBT or FET.
Same on some modern inverter welders.
What a load of balls!
That's what she said!
BALLZZZ! - Jeoff Peterson (the robot from the Late Late Show)
Do you mean a commercial tumble dryer? Of the ones we have here on the "other side of the pond" use motors very similar to the ones in the top-loading washing machines so they may have a capacitor, but I think it's only for starting it. I could be wrong though as it's been a while since I had a 1/3 hp laundry motor, 120 or 240 V. Those motors are similar to what are seen in our furnaces/air handlers/central air conditioners, with the exception of the compressors of course, but you get the idea.
Sadly, it's a sign of the times, as I don't last as long as I used to, either.
7:00 - capacitors of that black enclosure type are used in ceiling fans too.
A different sort of messy to the goo that ejects from oil-filled capacitors when they get punctured.
I think Dave Jones did an interview with a guy in capacitor manufacture who said these film capacitors are more likely to lose value due to moisture ingress?
That stuff at the end...is that the schoopage you've mentioned earlier? EDIT: I should have kept watching; you confirm it at about 5:50.
Heh, I'm glad you spelled it out - when he mentioned it, I was like "what now?? What did he say??"
I must say, I love your videos Clive!
A nice teardown, I never really took one apart yet. I'd expect a cap to be potted rather than having any loose filler material inside.
Wondering if the balls are for insulation from the cold to stop them freezing ?
Nice explanation Clive many thanks ❤😊
Hey there big Clive i do hobby electronics and have often found poly start capacitors blown out through the side Tue the start windings burnt out.
There is an old Jaffa saying, _"They do not make them as they once did"._
I never thought I would watch a video that mentioned schoopage - I thought only I and the capacitor manufacturers knew that word! :)
I remember coming across that word in the spec for a capacitor which was written in French and having no idea what it meant. I was working for a large company but their foreign language translation department was unable to translate it. I didn't discover what it was until years later.
What is the current consumption on like a 20w cfl that "buzz" fails in a remote spot like an out building and draws for months but stays dark and you don't notice it and think it is off? -asking for a friend
If a fluorescent light is off, but glowing at the ends it is possibly drawing more than if it was lit.
I've had IR motion sensor, that turns the light on/off/on/off/on etc. and I know it would be easily repaired, but they're so cheap, that it's easier to just install a new one. Then the new one works longer, so it's a win.
Should take a look at a SOX lamp ballast, HPS ballast, and MV ballast and see how they differ.
HPS similar to MH. SOX and MV usually just a simple choke with either internal start electrode or shunt igniter.
When I was growing some tomato's on my attic I had 6 of those 600watt things.
Worked a treat!
The kids call it "tomatoes" now??? Hard to keep up with the lingo - thought it was "whacky tabacky"
@@gorak9000 Damn - you beat me to it. Great comment! 😊
@@gorak9000 😂
I'm curious if capacitor drift could explain dimming over lifetime of LED bulbs. I notice on some bulbs that when I replace them the new bulb is noticeably brighter then the old. Some of that may just be "leds are being over driven and fade over time", but if they're based off a capacitive dropper then capacitance drift may be a large factor as well.
It's possible with a cap dropper bulb, but is usually phosphor and LED degradation.
Question the resistor that goes across the terminal of the capacitor is that constantly discharging electricity while the unit is being used because I would think it would get hot from it just discharging constantly and not only when the unit is turned off
It passes a low current. The capacitor is discharged to a safe level over several seconds after power is removed.
Self healing: Perfect for absorbing transients. However I have seen such resistors shorting out and constantly blowing 20 A fuses.
If this pyrophoric like the nimh battery that will set your bench on fire? are those beads just spacers?
Just packing. No charge or active chemicals are stored in the film.
“ GoodEvening Clive❤”
Looks like the Cap one might find on a Generator --- when they fail you loose output.
However did Clive know that strip joints involve glitter?
It's part of showbiz.
The title of this video sounds like a particularly innocent person naming an adult film
In my country VERY BAD cap will usually filled with half or very small cap) and even ANOTHER cap inside (for example 100000uF 50V with the inside are 4700uF 35V) for cheaper price and also filled with aspalt or wax. Mostly happen in Chinese cap or very cheap audio use cap
A few months ago, I had the misfortune to change capacitor in a tumbler drier, never again. You virtually have to dismantle the drier, that took two hours and resemble a macano kit, when dismantle, 5 minutes to install the capacitor, 3 hours to reassemble the drier. At my hourly rate , it's cheaper to buy a new tumbler drier and pay for the 5 year warranty.its not cost effective to just change the capacitor, you need to change drive belts , tension pulleys and bearings at the same time . At make sure you have a first aid kit , because of the sharp edges ,
I don't think it should take 2 hours to take a dryer apart - usually about 5 minutes - it's only got 2 panels that come off
Are the poly beads there to absorb the capacitor going bang?
Probably just anti-vibration filler.
Out of curiosity. Could you make a Graphine capacitor using ordinary sticky tape and pencil graphite? As for the damage to the electronics I'm wondering if the shape set off a pipe bomb detector inside a delivery company depot somewhere.
"Easy to fix". Except the last tumble dryer I fixed that issue on the Planned Obsolescence Department had thought of that and designed a dryer which was built by starting with the run capacitor and building the dryer around it. It eventually succumbed to the power screwdriver, lots of bad language and quite a few "one moment please" interludes.
Instead of "the magic smoke was released", in the case of that cap, the "Polystyrene balls fell out" Definitely a nice failure mode. 😀
Foiled again by a capacitor, eh? 8^) Neat to see one apart (fully). Cheers!
Will we get to see what you're planning to do with that yuge ballast???
Clive, I'm sure with some Superglue and Some Sellotape you could rebuild this Ballast Device so it's like New !
These look very familiar 😂😂, just minus the ubiquitous birds nest around the nice warm ballast 😁😁
And they now build them on the LED heatsink instead.
Big inductors sounds interesting.
What a load of balls. (I hate that packing material)
Which wire do you cut to stop it exploding?
It's a street light ballast, so it'll probably explode anyway.
Always cut the red one, or is it the blue one?
@@petehiggins33 but what if your colour blind?
So Clive: what was the point of those polystyrene spheres? I get how the capacitor works, but not how the polystyrene makes it more wonderful?
Just packing inside the case.
I had never seen a cap having a package like that, interesting
This design is a load of balls
It puts a smile on my face every time you say ‘mega farts’.
"Veterans Of The Streetlight Industry" - new Journey album
Destroyed in that special kind of a way
NICE VID
In the late 90s I was kicked out of class because I had the heresy to suggest designing a simple device to disconnect the PFC capacitor(s) when no current was flowing through the reactor, explaining that when there were several burned out discharge lamps in a warehouse, because that was really common, the installation could end overcompensated enough to cause a power surge when powered by the emergency generator.
Of course there's nothing to compensate when the burned bulb is in series with the reactor and the PFC capacitor is in parallel with the mains, but good luck trying to explain that to a moron with a teacher job.
Fortunately for today's students, the same institute is now making money from various patents instead of kicking out students with ideas.
And what had to be changed was not any student but 95% of the teaching staff who in many cases did not have the necessary studies... or none at all! but they could -teach- _work as teachers_ thanks to the loopholes, wormholes and a**holes of a system designed during a dictatorship that took a quarter of a century to be updated...
The X2 capacitor is supposed to be a safety capacitor, correct?
It's usually for electrical noise suppression. A class Y capacitor is safety rated.
hello again from newfoundland
Ohhh, a weed growers lamp ballast...Thank God for leds.
I guess sand was too expensive to pack those caps with... :P
That’s some small balls for professor clive 👍👍👍👍😂😂😂😂😂
I have scraped hundreds of those modules.