Re: Substitutes for GSC T18C 1500uF 6.3V caps

In article <11blbk8p9p5753f@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Watson A.Name - \"Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\" <alondra101@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>> Don't you just love having to suffer the consequences of somebody
>> else's incompetent industrial espionage?

>Eh? If it was incompetent, then I'd think the epsionage would be
>unsuccessful. Maybe I'm clueless as to what you're referring to. In
>any case, nowadays, it's common for the MoBo to be replaced before any
>of the parts die.

Over the past few years, a whole bunch of motherboards, and other
industrial and consumer-electronics devices, have died a premature
death due to capacitor bloating and leakage. The lifetime of the caps
involved seems to have been on the order of 1-3 years, depending on
temperature and load - sometimes as little as six months. This is
seriously annoying for motherboards (not everybody wants to replace
'em after a year or two) and really annoying for network
hubs/switches, 802.11 access points (both of my original-model Apple
Airport base stations quit due to this problem), etc.

The cause was incompetent industrial espionage. As I understand the
story, somebody who had worked for a major capacitor manufacturer (in
Japan) stole the formula for his employer's new capacitor electrolyte
formulation, and sold it to competing manufacturers in Taiwan and
China. The formula "as sold" (and possibly "as stolen") was
incomplete... it didn't include some of the stability additives. Caps
made with the incomplete electrolyte tend to self-destruct - the
electrolyte begins outgassing, the caps swell up and go high-ESR and
sometimes leak.

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/feb03/ncap.html has one
version of the story.

--
Dave Platt <dplatt@xxxxxxxxxxxx> AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!
.