An SMD Capacitor Guide

For electronics, your knowledge probably follows a bit of a bell curve over time. When you start out, you know nothing. But you eventually learn a lot. Then you learn enough to be comfortable, and …

Why Do Rifa Capacitors Fail?

Anyone who works with older electronic equipment will before long learn to spot Rifa capacitors, a distinctive yellow-translucent component often used in mains filters, that is notorious for failur…

Hackaday Prize 2022: A Not-So-Smart Spot Welder

DIY spot welders often use high-powered components that can be a bit frightening, given the potential for dangerous malfunctions. [Wojciech “Adalbert” J.] designed his capacitive discha…

Condemned Precision Capacitors Find New Home, Refuse To Become Refuse

Ah, the age old tradition of Dumpster diving! Sometimes we happen to spot something that’s not quite trash, but not quite perfect, either. And when [dzseki], an EEVblog.com forum user, spotte…

Taking A Close Look At Parallel Plate Capacitors

Of course, we all know that capacitors are conceptually two conductors separated by a dielectric of some sort. But outside of air-variable capacitors you normally don’t see them looking like …

How Do Capacitors Work?

If you are like [The Science Asylum], you might wonder how a capacitor can work since, at their core, they are nothing more than a gap filled with air or another insulator. He explains how in a rec…

Smaller Is Sometimes Better: Why Electronic Components Are So Tiny

Perhaps the second most famous law in electronics after Ohm’s law is Moore’s law: the number of transistors that can be made on an integrated circuit doubles every two years or so. Sinc…

Faulty Electrolytic Caps Don’t Always Look Bad

Old electrolytic capacitors are notorious for not working like they used to, but what exactly does a bad capacitor look like, and what kinds of problems can it cause? Usually bad caps leak or bulge…