Talk:Capacitor plague/Archive 2

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Archive 1 Archive 2

They are still around

I can confirm that the bad caps are still around. I purchased a DVD player in November 2007 (direct from China, and the PC boards are marked as October 2006) and today took out the power supply board and found one cap with its sleeve perched on top of its contents and 2 other caps that have some pretty major leakage issues. So definitely reports are still coming in 2011 !

PhilSDP (talk) 19:18, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Even if the caps are manufactured in 2011 there are other factors to make them faulty like bad voltage/current source or temperature. The alluminium could be low quality or something ;). The water could heat up and so on :). I come across them too in PSU for PC's manufactured 2008. --Leonardo Da Vinci (talk) 10:44, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Anyone that truly understands the Capacitor Plague (unlike the 'accredited' authors here) knows it is here to stay. - If those authors actually bothered to read some of the references given right at the bottom of the page that fact would be clear to them. - It doesn't show up on motherboards as often but that is entirely due to the industries shift to solid and hybrid polymer caps on motherboards. - In other equipment the situation has not changed. One problem is that things like failing flat screens and power supplies don't have enough "wow-factor" to interest the News media and the authors here prefer to get their info from reporters over techs that actually work in this field. - I've been an electronics tech since 1981 and beginning around 2003 to present replacing caps in IT equipment has occupied a significant part of my time. I see failed power supplies and flat screens that are less than one year old and filled bloated caps almost on a daily basis. (For example: Dell Optiplex 790 SFF power supplies are currently failing in droves due to popped caps. That system wasn't even released for sale until the first quarter of 2011.) --- NO, I am NOT going to correct this article AGAIN just to have my work removed by some twit that has never held a soldering iron in his life. --- In summary: Capacitor Plague has ONLY gone away on motherboards. In everything else it is still a problem. .. 70.190.64.146 (talk) 08:00, 15 January 2013 (UTC) .

Hi 70.190.64.146, sorry, that I can not address you with a nick name. Working with and for wet al-electrolytic capacitors since more than 40 years I understand very well, that complaints with wet electrolytics occurs every day. But the mechanism of failure described in this article is a water based corrosion driven by missing additives (inhibitors). What I really see in industrial developments is a "searching for limits". The ripple loads get higher and higher, so that the useful life time gets shorter and shorter. Overload, increasing temperature evoked by occluded cooling elements or to small heat sinks - all in detail small decisions during development of circuits are leading to failures in shorter life times than estimated. For example, my old Philips "Transistor" radio works now every day since 30 years. With wet al-el-caps! This was safe development (and electrolytes with inhibitors). The problem nowadays is not a "wrong electrolyte" but a worse development in case of temperature and current loads. Greatings --Elcap (talk) 09:03, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

That's what I've been saying. - You people don't know what you are talking about... - If that is what you want this article to be about then you must remove ALL MENTION OF: Dell, Apple, HP failures and ALL MENTION of the defective Nichicon HM and HN series capacitors made between 2001 and 2004 that cause those failures because water based corrosion had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with those failures. - - If you had bothered to read the references right at the bottom of the page then you would know that. ... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.190.64.146 (talk) 20:32, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

water based corrosion driven by missing additives (inhibitors) has NEVER been an issue with Japaneses made capacitors. Never. And Dell has been using 100% Japaneses made capacitors sine the 1990's.

---Not true, 90% or more of the dead motherboards I serviced were manufactured by MSI for Dell. And these capacitors were the same Taiwanese brands involved in the newsbreak of October 2002.

What you are trying to do is associate the stolen electrolyte matter with -all- failed capacitors during that time span when the FACT is there two distinct and COMPLETELY UNRELATED problems during that time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.190.64.146 (talk) 20:40, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi 70.190.64.146, as an older man and a German I want to be polite, and that means, I want to address you personally. Sorry, that you prefer an IP number. Yes in some cases you are completely right. The water based corrosion should be specified exactly to the related series and related manufacturers. In the first year after beginning of failures thousands of people reports their failures and surely, not water based failures would be reported, too. I believe I understand, what you want to say. Within the many authors written on this article may be some of them mixed “normal” wear out failures with the early water based corrosion failures. But how we can make this article better? From the Taiwanese manufacturers I never got a list saying X, Y and Z had made such e-caps. Otherwise, name all manufacturers worldwide never use the stolen electrolyte formula would be addresses here as advertising (and would make a lot of work) May be we can find some positions or sentences in the article to make more precise the difference between problem related caps and those, don’t have corrosion but other reasons for failure. By the way, from me only the description of the e-cap construction and the failure mechanism comes. Kind regards --Elcap (talk) 08:45, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

You still don't get it. There are two different plagues that have to do with water based corrosion, only one of which has to do with the stolen electrolyte. Both of those only affect non-Japanese brands of Asian made caps. The non-espionage issue has been around since the 1940's but didn't reach plague proportions until around year 2000 when what we expect caps to do exceeded the limitations of those marginal parts. That plague is still at full force and isn't going away. Few motherboard companies still use those (so they are off most peoples radar) but they are the most common kind of cap used in flat screens, SMPS and networking devices and in those applications they fail prematurely in droves TO THIS DAY. There was a third plague that doesn't have anything to do with water based corrosion at all and only affected two series of Nichicons, a Japaneses brand. - It would not be unreasonable to call the use of downsized chassis a 4th plague. The excess heat in SFF and USFF PC cases as well as in 'thin' flat screens causes a large numbers of premature failures even when Japanese caps are used. - I have personally fixed the main article 4 or 5 times since 2005 only to have correct information removed and replaced with erroneous information by people that DON'T work in this field. I'm not doing it again. -- The authors should be required to read ALL the references before they edit anything. . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.190.64.146 (talk) 22:36, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi 70.190.64.146, I close this discussion now. Your last remark shows me, that you are not interested in a precise analysis of the multiple failure modes of failed wet e-caps. The excess heat in flat devices is not a failure mode of failed capacitors but a wrong development of the device had chosen the cheapest e-caps with to short life time specification. Too bad. May be You can deliver information about a second and a third “non water based” capacitor plague, but mixing failure modes and failure reasons is not the correct way. --Elcap (talk) 08:34, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

As I already said once on this page, if you want to make the plague exclusive to water based corrosion you will have to remove all references to failures of Nichicon HM and HN series because that was not the issue with them at all. In doing so you will be removing the bulk of motherboard failures from 2001-2004 built motherboards from consideration completely. For instance if you aren't counting heat as an issue and you aren't counting HM and HN failures the number of Dell, Intel, and MAC failures would be nearly ZERO. None of those manufacturers used Taiwan made caps during that time. None. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.190.76.149 (talk) 22:05, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

There have been no studies I can find that associate 'premature water based corrosion' with ANY Japanese brand, and, as you have elected to use a definition of Capacitor Plague that is not consistent with what the rest of the world uses, you have excluded Nichicon HM and HN and every other Japanese brand (including the failure prone KZG and KZJ series) from being part of the plague. (Dell, Intel and MAC motherboards were exclusively Japanese caps from 2001-2004 so you can no longer include those failures as part of the plague - as the whole rest of the world does. But they did use HM. HN, KZG and KZJ which are all Japanese and all failure prone in those years.) Thus you will need to remove the following references because they don't apply the way you currently define the plague. - References 11, 12, 13, 14, 34, 42. . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.190.76.149 (talk) 22:48, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I will check and delete or add remarks. --Elcap (talk) 09:31, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Problems in the lede ... not all bad caps imply the plague

The lede begins, "The capacitor plague (also known as bad capacitors or "bad caps")". This seems wrong: the capacitor plague refers to a particular set of circumstances (industrial espionage, etc., etc.) that led to bad capacitors. But not every bad capacitor is the result of the capacitor plague. Am I missing something? Can not the parenthesis safely be removed? jhawkinson (talk) 02:07, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

You are right. "Also known as ...." is a typical term coming from laymans in the internet. I hope, the special circumstances would be clear enough described in the article. --Elcap (talk) 17:43, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 Done jhawkinson (talk) 04:47, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

citation needed on "may still have more than historical" claim

Hi, working now since more than 40 years for and with aluminum electrolytic capacitors I have some experiances of more than these water based corrosion failures. Some are: Weaken the rubber through aggrassive electrolyte, copper whisker and shorts as problem of an organic electrolyte and a special cathode, chloride based corrosion, mechanical internal damages with some inserting machines, venting cases by outside pressure, shorts by bending and so on. For all these failure mechanism nothing was published and can be found described in the internet. Only if you read some datasheets you can find some caution rules for mounting, soldering or board cleaning. Behind all rules failure mechanism are hidden. If you want please find another formulation for this sentence you need a citation for. What i wanted to say was: technical solutions may be unsafe if approvals are not available and the low price is the reason for using. Regards --Elcap (talk) 09:05, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I marked that paragraph citation needed in part because I'm not sure it is the right fit for this article. After all, this article is really about a (hopefully) historical event: a bad stolen formula lead to bad products. There are all kinds of other things that can cause failures, but do they really belong in this article? It is not an article about any kind of component failure, it's really about the failures from the "plague." Of course the plague-related failures are similar to other kinds of failures, for sure.
Anyhow, the standard for Wikipedia is verifiability, and editors should avoid drawing conclusions without supporting facts (in fact, Wikipedia's guideliness discourage drawing conclusions at all, even if you do have the citation). jhawkinson (talk) 11:51, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
Hi, I understand, to be anxious against crime behavior doesn't fit the theme of this article. I delete the sentence, if you agree. (or you can do it) Regards --Elcap (talk) 12:56, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
I'd suggest you go ahead and do it. jhawkinson (talk) 01:35, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Original research

The "Electrical Effects" section of this topic is completely unreferenced and is ancillary to the "plauge". Is there a reason this section shouldn't be removed? -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:57, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

The "Development of electrolytic capacitors with water-based electrolytes" section is also very poolry referenced and seems orthogonal to the capacitor plague. It seems like it should be removed too; or, at best, moved to the electrolytic capacitor article. Even so, it seems inappropriate to move poorly referenced material. -- Mikeblas (talk) 18:47, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
Hi Mikeblas, what are you doing? Your changes destroys the article. It was an article about the rumor in the public, the chemical part only was the explanation of what happened.
And why do you delete all ref's? Example: The first flawed capacitors were reported in September 2002.The ref was: Carey Holzman, Overclockers, Capacitors: Not Just For Abit Owners, 10. Sept. 2002, [1] What is wrong with this ref? If you dont believe it, please ask him, he is wellknown: Carey Holzman
All your remarks "poolry referenced" I want to discuss. Do you can arrange a user page: "User:Elcap/Capacitor plague" with the status of the article let me say of about June 2013 and than we can discuss all points one by one. --Elcap (talk) 13:47, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
I removed that reference because it was to a blog post that expresses personal research and not established and reviewed information, and doesn't appear to be a reliable source. Further, it doesn't substantiate the claim in the article that "The first flawed capacitors were reported in September 2002". The reference actually says the author saw equipment in failed capacitors starting in January, but doesn't give a year for that month and the post itself isn't dated. As such, the reference fails validation and was removed.
Feel free to discuss the poorly referenced remarks here on the talk page. -- Mikeblas (talk) 14:33, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
Hi Mikeblas, yes, this ref was/is a blog post. But out of my own experiances (Dipl. Ingenieur, 40 years busy in the industry for capacitors) the informaton The first notice in the web was correct. May be you misunderstand the sense of the first paragraphs of this article. The first paragraphs describe at first a rumor, this rumor expand to a criminal case with a enormous respond on blogs and newspaper articles. You cant find for the first time any "reliable source". Even some years later you only can find 3 or 4 sources which are reliable in the sense of the Wiki definition.
For this article in the beginning paragraphs we have to leave the strong Wiki rules in point of refs. Otherwise we can delete this article complete, because the explanation of the wrong running oxidation allone makes no sense. May be we have to undersign a little bit clearer, that in first paragraphs only a rumor is described.
By the way, to move some parts of this article to Electrolytic capacitor is unadvisable, this English article is a stub, and in the English Wiki you dont have an article about Aluminum electrolytic capacitors. I am just beginning to translate my German article Aluminium Elektrolytkondensatoren into (I hope understandable) English. --Elcap (talk) 08:33, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
If there's only a few reliable references, then the article needs to be a lot shorter. The irrelevant material should be remove, and the unreferenced material should go as well -- unless good references can be found to substantiate it. Wikipedia is not the place for original essays. -- Mikeblas (talk) 10:17, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

I've removed the section "Electrolytic Capacitor failures after 2007" as it is largely irreleant, poorly sourced, and based on speculation. The section relied on a forum post to establish that capacitors were still failing, but this post didn't include date code information on the failed capacitors, didn't establish when the capacitors in question were put into service, and didn't analyze the failure for other possible causes. The subsections about ripple curent, temperature, and end-of-life process are also original research and irrelevant to this article, anyway. Had they been better referenced, I would have considered moving them to the electrolytic capacitor article.

Editing the "Evidence of defective electrolyte" section revealed only one relevant section that was referenced, and I rewrote this statement and placed it appropriately in the article before removing the section.

The "Development of electrolytic capacitors with water-based electrolytes" section was also removed as it is irrelevant to this article. Should references become available for this research, the material would be better placed at the "electrolytic capacitor" article as it is not relatd to the capacitor plague problem. I have moved some images to the electrolytic capacitor article as the standard for verificaiton of images is lower (or non-existant!) compared to the verifiability standard for prose.

These edits take care of the more egregious original research issues in this article, but the text still has significant referencing and verifiability problems. -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:41, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Mike, I'm with you on this one, but still - some of the content you removed actually explained the stuff and shed a bit of light on the issue... I agree the article was too big&cranky and inherently flawed, but I'd leave a bit more of it, just for the sake of promoting incremental community edits vs advocating (even if, arguably, good & needed) single person cuts. Not that the cuts aren't needed here - like I've stated, I'm with you on this issue - it's just that some of those information might spark an idea about *how* to improve this article... broken page provokes improvement, empty page achieves nothing IMVHO.Vaxquis (talk) 23:37, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Mechanisms for how to improve the article are the same for any other topic on Wikipedia: if the explanations you're looking for are available from good sources and can be use to add verifiable content to the article, write 'em up and add them here or to the electrolytic capacitor topic. -- Mikeblas (talk) 21:48, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

References?

This article indicts many vendors by name, but provides no references for that indictment. Is that responsible? -- Mikeblas 02:44, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the uncited section. -- Mikeblas 20:29, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I've added an earlier reference from 2002. THE MEDIA OUTBURST BEGAN WHEN THOMAS SODERSTROM PUBLISHED INFORMATION TO A MESSAGE BOARD THAT WAS PICKED UP BY ED SPERLING and referred a second technician, Carey Holzman. Ed Sperling broke the story and deserves full credit, since his article was the impetus for those that followed months later. He was even responsible for the research the exposed several manufacturers and the purported link to industrial espionage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.33.217.185 (talk) 07:18, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Rename article, restore old version

Can't remember why I checked the talk page, obviously because I didn't like the article. Seeing the comments in the previous section, I checked an older version of the page, which has way more useful information about electrolytic caps and failure modes. Since mike himself said (in 2006) that there was no reliable source for the term "capacitor plague", this article should be about failure of elcos in general. Enough reliable sources for that, and most of the removed material can be restored. Anyone looking for more info may want to check this older version: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Capacitor_plague&oldid=567034386 Ssscienccce (talk) 20:43, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

It's hard to comprehend btw how anyone checking the references did not notice the discrepancies in the industrial espionage story; a researcher moving to China (for a woman?) taking the formula with him to give it to his new Chinese employer, the subsequent sale of a flawed version of the formula that still complies to the accelerated aging tests used in quality checks to Taiwanese companies; that is substantially different from a man moving from Japan to Taiwan and taking an incomplete formula with him. I don't consider this unimportant details, given the China-Taiwan history... Ssscienccce (talk) 20:59, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi, as the main author of the destroyed article it seems to me like a "hack attack" from inside Wikipedia. I tried to start a discussion during the first changes point by point but the parts and sections of the article was deleted in a speed I never could follow. Everybody hwo wants to read the article in the status before destroying can see it under User:Elcap/Bad caps.
It could be, that the information in this article, that the electrolytic capacitors with "good" 70 % water electrolyt after reaching their end of life may end in the same way with blowing up the case as the former bad ones, that this information bother some capacitor manufacturers. That may be a reason for deleting this information by destroying the article. --Elcap (talk) 08:18, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
By the way, information about the materials scientist working for a Japanese company, left the company and began working for a Chinese electrolytic company is given under: Low-ESR Aluminum Electrolytic Failures Linked to Taiwanese Raw Material Problems[2] --Elcap (talk) 08:25, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Need help with lg 32 inch capacitors, took old ones out, now forget where to put new ones — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.245.86.253 (talk) 00:43, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Need help with lg 32 uinch capacitors, took old ones out, now forget where to put new ones . Mike 7-30-14 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.245.86.253 (talk) 00:45, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

What is this article about?!

Is this article about capacitor failure in general, or about some particular incident with a few shoddy brands? Because capacitor failure itself is a common problem in all of electronics and deserves an article, but the incident should just be a footnote or a subsection. The focus of this article in general seems to be really off. But, at least, there isn't any "commercial bias" here, and no "neutrality" problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.38.162.22 (talk) 23:47, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

It's 2014 and the question is still valid. Reading through the Discussion Pages I've learned that bad capacitors predate the "Capacitor Electrolyte" internet meme, have continued past that point and in particularly informative contributor explains why there will always be bad capacitors for a complex set of reasons. The name of the Article is it's first and most glaringly obvious problem, and then second to that there needs to be some kind of established "scope" of what bad capacitors are, how they come to be "bad", some mention of the "electrolyte" meme, but special attention needs to be made that the meme story is not the first, only nor even the most important thing to discuss about bad capacitors. It's importance is up for discussion, particularly I think because the purported "Engineer" that stole the formula has not been named, nor have I seen any specific details that ground the story in reality. I shall continue to regard it as "urban legend" until some substantive information is brought forward. It's a nice tale, but it's not the entirety of the bad capacitor situation, nor is it even it's most important, or significant, part.Jonny Quick (talk) 23:05, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
It is not a nice tale, it was a criminal case (without official announced judgement). The industry don´t have a bad capacitor situation, the reliability of capacitors is as good as for other electronic components. The official figures are in the lower FIT level. The difference is the visuability. If a capacitor fails, either tantalum with burning or aluminum with bursting, everbody can see what happened. If semiconductors fail only measurements could prove the failure. The failing results of the criminal case had an end at 2007. Capacitor failures nowadays have to analysed case by case. It is not scientifical to talk about "bad capacitors" in general. A new article with clear references to this case of "capacitor plage" is in preparation. --Elcap (talk) 17:55, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

I understand that people who are not experts in analysis of aluminum electrolytic capacitors may think, that behind the paragraphs “Evidence of insufficient composed electrolyte” and “Autopsy of failed electrolytic capacitors” a “possibly original research” is hide. This is not the case. Let me explain. The basic research about corrosion of metals was done in the 1960s- 1970s years (H. Kaesche, Die Korrosion der Metalle - Physikalisch-chemische Prinzipien und aktuelle Probleme, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1966, ISBN: 978364184277). (D. A. Vermilyea, W. Vedder, Inhibition of the aluminum+water reaction Trans. Faraday Soc., 1970, 66, 2644-2654, DOI: 10.1039/TF9706602644)

After this basic research in universities the further elimination of corrosion in e-caps was business in the development and quality departments of the producer of e-caps. This research was secret. No producer wants to show the best inhibitors to the competition. However, insider know how to detect water based corrosion. Simple microscope images show the aluminum hydroxide plaques, a SEM images together with a fingerprint analyses prove the incorrect oxide. This analyses are carried out at manufacturers side since about mid of 1970 in Europe and since about 1980 in Japan. I saw a lot of internal quality reports of such analyses. (Not all was kept secret)

In my archive I found a lot of images of such reports so I have selected some neutral pictures demonstrating the water driven corrosion without any indication of a manufacturer or customer. It is not my work, the information came from some larger producers of e-caps. (sorry for my “Denglish) I delete the above mentioned banner. --Elcap (talk) 11:58, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

@Elcap: Die Korrosion der Metalle - Physikalisch-chemische Prinzipien und aktuelle Probleme had an invalid ISBN (1 character too short). I have replaced it with the (an) ISBN for the 1990 edition. (Springer tends to publish everything with 2 ISBNs, one for German language area, and one for English language area.) The 1966 edition will only have an ISBN if it was assigned one post facto, as ISBNs came in in 1967. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:56, 5 January 2015 (UTC).

Original Research

I've again removed large amounts of unreferenced material from this article. Material on Wikipeida must be verifiable, and the essays which have been added to this article are not. -- Mikeblas (talk) 14:08, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Edits should also be constructive. Yours here are anything but. You have confused slavish implementation of a simplistic policy with constructive improvement. Rather than simply deleting large sections (you've removed nearly a third of the article here), it would be so much better to instead look at sourcing the contentious material and making an actual improvement.
As it is, this is now a worse article than before. It fails to mention the "Great PC Motherboard Plague" incident, the reason why the vast majority of our readers will have come to this page.
Your edits here are a great ego-massaging exercise and no doubt you'll fit in beautifully with our ever-more dogmatic Young Pioneers of the admin cadre, but please don't fool yourself that this was a constructive blanking. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:45, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
Removing material that is not referenced original research is constructive, as such material is of dubious quality and therefore confusing to readers. The page wasn't blanked; only sections that were unreferenced removed. Verifiability is a core policy of this encyclopedia, as is the policy of no original research. If you'd like to see the material remain, then feel free to find sources that support it and replace the material after verifying its veracity against the references. .
This article isn't the place for personal essays--no topic page on Wikipedia is. -- Mikeblas (talk) 02:14, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

DMA and DMF?

Elcap, are you sure DMA and DMF have good characteristics in the long term like GBL? I ask because as far as I know, DMA and DMF are amide solvents.

According to this article (pages 22 and 23), amide solvents have the same tendencies as electrolyte with high H2O content, IE a tendency to destroy the oxide layer on the anode, and that certain compounds and depolarizers can be used as inhibitors to reduce the eventual generation of hydrogen gas.

Wester546 (talk) 22:33, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi Wester546, my experiances over 30 years with DMF and DMA electrolytes for 105 °C applications (max) is, that the long term characteristic of this capacitors are quite good as for GBL (125 °C max) capacitors. Longer life for GBL results from lower gas pressure. Hydrogen production, which lowers the lifetime due to self-healing properties, depends on lower water contend. With drying the winding down to 1...2 % water content in DMF, DMA as well as for GBL e-caps and corrosion inhibitors in principle no end-of-life due to other chemical corrosion was found. --Elcap (talk) 10:09, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

"Capacitor Plague"?

Why is this called the "Capacitor Plague"? Searching the web, I find very few references to the term. -- Mikeblas 12:45, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

It needed a name and this one is fitting as such. Capacitors (or condensers) are involved, and a plague, or "illness" if you will, strikes them. This problem was widespread, as is a plague. Stovetopcookies 21:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. I don't recall seeing any technical texts (consumer level computer magazines don't count) refer to the problem in these terms, and the term does not describe the problem. "Capacitor plague" implies a problem with the very presence of capacitors when they are essential components. 79.77.101.45 (talk) 21:08, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Its a reasonable term and one which someone googling as I have just done will find. Duff caps certainly look sickly. --Gibnews (talk) 23:36, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Objectively, I can see two sides of this. Plague implies contagion. However, it also implies an incredibly widespread issue. On one hand, the issue is indeed very much a widespread one, attacking not only computer components, but also pretty much anything that uses this type of capacitor(Consider that the bad caps were sold at a cheaper price, therefore, any company standing to save some money would have bought the cheaper components to build). Everything from DVD players to flatscreen monitors, televisions to just about anything else that uses aluminum electrolyte caps.

On another hand, plague can make even more sense. Generally the death of one in a cluster can very quickly be a harbinger note to the death of the remainder of the cluster, even after the initial one is replaced, hence why it is generally recommended in the electronics industry to, if one failed capacitor is spotted, replace All of the capacitors in the cluster, if not all of the caps on the board as a whole. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.22.114.62 (talk) 22:00, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Capacitor Plague makes sense. Bubonic Plague is a plague related to a disease that presents as buboes (swollen lymph glands). So a Capacitor Plague is reasonably a disease that presents as defects in the capacitors. And since it was widespread and hard to eradicate, it's a plague. Also, Capacitor Plague is definitely going to be the name of my next band. 68.2.235.85 (talk) 04:17, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

What term ever should be used? Starting the article two terms were used: "Bad caps" and in more serious publications "capacitor plague". The discussion now don't understand the situation in the past. --Elcap (talk) 01:03, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

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Rubycon ZL - water-base electrolyte?

It came to my notice that the page holds claim that Rubycon ZL (along with ZA) uses a water-base electrolyte with water content up to 40% unlike most "conventional" electrolytics up to that time which used either ethylene glycol, boric acid, or gamma-butyrolactone (or possibly the quaternary ammonium salt compounds).

However, if you look at this page of an old web archive of Rubycon's website, Rubycon expressly states that Rubycon ZL employed ethylene glycol-ammonium salt as its electrolyte, though with "improved" and higher conductivity than the previous electrolyte used. As far as I'm aware, ethylene glycol is an organic solvent, not just a water base-electrolyte, though ethylene glycol by itself does react with water and generates up to 20% water content as the article also states. But to say that Rubycon ZL does not use an organic solvent isn't true according to Rubycon. Unless there is something I'm missing? I would greatly appreciate clarification.

Wester546 (talk) 22:55, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

In a very gross simplification, operating electrolytes can be divided into three groups:
  • Borax or glycol solutions with approximately 5 to 20 % water content for standard applications. In these electrolytes, the water causes the chemical reaction "acid + alcohol" gives "ester + water".
  • Organic solutions such as GBL, DMA or DMF which are nearly free of water for stable parameters and long life in industrial applications
  • Solutions with water content up to 70% for use at high ripple current in low end capacitors
The difference is the percentage of water.
The evidence of water percentage in Rubycon ZL series is given in:
Shigeru Uzawa, Akihiko Komatsu, Tetsushi Ogawara, Rubycon Corporation, Ultra Low Impedance Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor with Water based Electrolyte. Journal of Reliability Engineering Association of Japan Accession number;02A0509168, ISSN:0919-2697, VOL.24;NO.4;PAGE.276-283(2002)
see ref number 18 --Elcap (talk) 08:03, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
I repeat the second time the source of the Rubycon development: Shigeru Uzawa, Akihiko Komatsu, Tetsushi Ogawara, Rubycon Corporation, Ultra Low Impedance Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor with Water based Electrolyte. Journal of Reliability Engineering Association of Japan Accession number;02A0509168, ISSN:0919-2697, VOL.24;NO.4;PAGE.276-283(2002)
Water based electrolyte means, a high up to a very high percentage of the electrolyte is water, the remaining is more or less secret --Elcap (talk) 09:12, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Elcap,

I only edited this page because the new version of the web archive no longer displays old sites using frames, so I had to find an alternative archive of the old Rubycon archive. I don't doubt that "water-base electrolyte" means electrolytic solvents and solutions employing anywhere between 40%-75% water content. In recent years, "ultra-low impedance" capacitors employing 70% water or more have been obsoleted and discontinued in favor of conductive functional and/or organic polymer capacitors.

Wester546 (talk) 00:52, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

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Merge

The section "Non-solid aluminum electrolytic capacitors" is only ancillarily related to the subject of this article. It's much more appropriate at the electrolytic capacitor article because it discusses electrolytic capacitors in general, not as they relate to this specific issue. -- Mikeblas (talk) 02:14, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Against. The behavior of some manufacturers have created an unique criminal case within the history of electronic components. This substantiates an capacitor plague article to be useable as “stand alone” article. For that the explanation of the capacitor construction is important. --Elcap (talk) 11:14, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Articles in Wikipedia don't need to be "stand alone" articles, as Wikipedia is not paper. The material here is redundant to (and already divergent to) the electrolytic article. The section in question is completely un-related to the capacitor formulation problem described by this article. -- Mikeblas (talk) 15:34, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
This proposal is stale, with support other than from the proposer. If anything, a merge to Aluminum electrolytic capacitor might have been more appropriate. For now, I'll switch to using a 'see also' template and someone can propose a new merge if there is interest. Klbrain (talk) 07:42, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Harmless glue?

Quote: "A dark brown or black crust up the side of a capacitor is invariably glue, not electrolyte. The glue itself is harmless."

Is this really true? There are many reports of such glue becoming conductive with age and causing considerable damage as a consequence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.159.113.176 (talk) 20:52, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

I have the same question. Also, where does 'invariably' come from? I don't see any citation. 91.221.120.78 (talk) 17:09, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

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