17 Mar
2005
17 Mar
'05
7:43 a.m.
Eric said:
It's probably worthwhile to disconnect
electrolytic capacitors and
reform them separately first. There are tons of web pages about that,
but the basic principle is to apply current-limited DC to it and slowly
let it charge. If you apply rated voltage without current limiting,
and it needs reformation, that's likely to cause it to fail
catastrophically as John described.
For a very overengineered approach to capacitor reformation which we
used on the PDP-1 project, see the draft of the restoration procedure,
the fifth document in this directory:
http://pdp-1.org/Documents/RestorationProject/
I read the page on reforming capacitors. Quite a good document. Now
I just need to take a refresher physics class so I can totally understand it.
Actually, I've been reading some lately on all this stuff, because I don't
like to mess with stuff that I don't understand.
Ashley