29 Oct
2006
29 Oct
'06
6:50 p.m.
Yeah, after touching it the first time I thought
that that should be the last time. How would
you go about replacing them, if you needed to?
Would it be safe after a week of no power, or
would the risk of electricution be just as bad?
Well, electrolytic capacitors are inherently 'leaky' -- that is, they
appear to have a resistor in parallel which will discharge them. Also,
any decent [1] swithc mode power supply design would have 'bleeder
resistors' connected across the main electrolytic capacitors to discharge
them
[1] But a lot of SMPSUs are not 'decent'....
Therefore, what I'd do is connect a voltmeter across each of the mains
smoothing capacitors in turn, and if there was significant voltage (say
10V), O would connect a 10k resistor (or thereabouts)
across said
capacitor to discharge it.
-tony