[sdiy] How do old electrolytics go bad?

[Bob Weigel]

If you had any ideas how *many* tools I need to keep in quick 
accessibility here... :-)  But you are letting your imagination go 
wild.  The fields will not produce significant stress on anything.  
Especially if you make some spark like I say :-).    But seriously I did 
the heating calculations, I can do the analysis of these types of 
concerns also but it's not remotely interesting because I know 
conceptually that the forces would be totally insignificant.

My experience like I say notes that no capacitor has ever gotten damaged 
doing this.  I have close relations with most of my customers.  If they 
had a subsequent problem with something they'd tell me.  I replace old 
capacitors and have never had to re-replace them in amps.  So it's an 
imaginary concern really.  That's all I have to say about it.  -Bob

Needham, Alan wrote:

>I would regard this practice to be "quick and dirty", uncouth!
>All this talk of just shorting electrolytics seems to be completely
>ignoring the cap's mechanical wellbeing. It may produce significant
>electromagnetic (or electrostatic?) fields which will try to flex the
>foils, loading the dielectric un-necessarily and shortening the cap's
>life.
>It takes a few seconds to dab a resistor across the terminals, giving
>lower currents, smaller sparks and cleaner underwear!
>
>My tuppence-worth!
>	Alan
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: synth-diy-bounces at dropmix.xs4all.nl
>[mailto:synth-diy-bounces at dropmix.xs4all.nl] On Behalf Of Steve Carter
>Sent: 09 February 2009 09:24
>To: Bob Weigel
>Cc: Synth DIY
>Subject: Re: [sdiy] How do old electrolytics go bad?
>
>... although some engineers regard it as  
>being  more than a little uncouth! ...
>
>... I usually incorporate a bleed resistor ...
>
>Steve
>
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