[sdiy] Reliable web site for capacitor packages & types

[Ove Ridé]

On 1 February 2012 20:43, Jean-Pierre Desrochers <jpdesroc at oricom.ca> wrote:
> Does anybody know a good web site that shows
> good pictures of ALL the actual standard capacitor types
> (ex: Polystyrene, Polyester, Metalized Polyester, etc..)
> with their real packages ?
> For an example:
> On the net I saw a lot of false pictures of capacitors
> named as Polystyrene type but they were actually
> Polyester or something else..
> This is very confusing when you sneak in your drawers
> to find a specific type of capacitor and you are messed up
> with the real package it should be in..

This is not a trivial task. You can of course easily distinguish
certain types of caps, say electrolytic ones vs ceramic disc caps, but
when it comes to different plastic types, you have to rely on
markings, which can be vendor-specific.

Here's what the bottom looks on four capacitors I have lying around:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/gameboygenius/6804489847/in/photostream>
Three of them are potted with an opaque resin, whereas one is potted
with a transparent resin, interestingly enough. Just from seeing this,
you never be able to figure out the dielectric.

Like I said, you have to rely on the markings:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/gameboygenius/6804492645/in/photostream>
The blue and green ones are ERO brand. You have the value and the
voltage rating, but the other thing of note is the MKP and MKT
designators. Google has an interesting tidbit of knowledge there:

# Metallized plastic polypropylene (German: Metallisierter Kunststoff
Polypropylen), a type of plastic-film capacitors (see also: Types of
capacitors)
# Metallized plastic polyester (German: metallisierter kunststoff
polyester), a type of plastic-film capacitors (the last “T” is due to
“P” been already used for “polypropylene” — see MKP). See also: Types
of capacitors

That's on the "disambiguation pages" for MKT and MKP.

I have no clue which dielectric the gray one is using, but on the
other side it says Rifa FS-capacitor PFE210GF. Googling for PFE210
capacitor leads me to.
http://www.evoxrifa.fi/aust_nz/obsolete_caps.htm
There's a table that says:

Old Type 	Modern Replacement
...
PFE210 (Note 1) 	PFR, PHE426

What does note 1 say?
"Note 1: These types were made in polystyrene film which is no longer
available from any source. Replacement types are made with
polypropylene and have different electrical and physical
characteristics."

Since this is an official information source (Evox Rifa) I'm pretty
confident that this is indeed a polystyrene cap.

Then there's the orange one, I'm pretty sure this is a tantalum cap.
After the F on the top, there's a line, indicating polarity. There's
also a line on the right side of the orange one in the picture, which
for some reason doesn't show up very well in the picture. Another
giveaway from experience that this is a tantalum is the tall height
and the orange color. From my biased experience, capacitors in a tall
package like that and/or capacitors in a plastic package that are
orange are often tantalum/electrolytes.

If you can provide pictures of a few of your caps, I can try to do
similar detective work for you.

-- 
/Ove

Blog: <http://blog.gg8.se/>

"Here is Evergreen City. Evergreen is the color of green forever."