Thursday, April 15, 2010

Swollen Capacitors

Around 2000-2002 there were many computers recalled because of faulty capacitors. Dell and Acer had the most call backs. Others included, IBM, Apple and HP.

It was as a result of a bit of industrial espionage. Seems as though a Japanese engineer jumped ship and went to China taking the speccies and formula for the electrolyte with him. Unfortunately he didn't get it quite right and there were massive failures.

I am repairing an Apple eMac at the moment with swollen capacitors. This eMac was built in China around that time and has 5 bulging capacitors. I have bought replacement caps and just have to remove the damaged ones and re-solder the new ones in and reassemble the machine and hope that it works. It is not a biggy; I have other eMacs, but I thought I would try out my soldering skills.

The capacitors cost about 14c.

Some pics....This shows good capacitors with flat tops
The capacitors here have swollen tops.

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