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Caps for Phase Perfect

bob

Titanium
Joined
Aug 12, 2002
Location
Regina, Canada
DigiKey has the line caps considerably cheaper than PP. If you are thinking about replacing yours I can send part number
Bob
 
Please do. My old-style blue 10HP PP has a decade of service on it, and I should probably be prepared to make the replacement.
 
It wouldn't be the first time that OEM parts were an off-the-shelf cheap item with a new part number and sticker and 300% markup.
 
It might be wise to use the better types. If these are expected to need replaced in 3 years, they are running them very hard, probably over design limits.

If so, then the cheaper part may fail earloier than even expected
 
DigiKey has the line caps considerably cheaper than PP. If you are thinking about replacing yours I can send part number
Bob

I don't WANT "cheaper".

I am au fait with adding a supplementary outboard enclosure to the P-P cabinet, if need be..

..to provide space for housing more DURABLE capacitors even if they cost a multiple of the OEM ones.

MOST of the "big bucks" were in the roughly four large for the 10 HP P-P, not "just" in their "suboptimal" choice of caps.

Why risk the "big bucks" trying to shave what is relative "pocket change", as a percentage of the investment?

This by-their-own-book mere three year replacement interval is just NOT on my dance card, going-forward.

Phase Technologies had their head out in the light of day, there would be an "extended life" option already on THEIR menu. And then they would STANDARDIZE on it, baked-in to the MSRP.

Something wrong with their thinking when even the cheapest of Chicom alleged-VFD have longer lives, and for-real, not just claimed?

Seems so.
 
Capacitors, depending where you buy them have tremendous markup. (what does the AC guy charge for one?) I bought US made caps for my PP a few years back and they were dirt cheap. Called a local motor shop, asked what they actually had on the shelf, the guy understood the importance. None of the electric or HVAC supply shops had anything US made, even a bigger local motor chain had only China.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D4R24NX I'm not saying buy on Amazon, but this is what I ended up with. I probably got lucky finding them locally. Mine actually say "Made in USA". Has the law regarding made vs assembled changed?

BTW, those I removed checked out to spec on my meter and were original 5 years or older when I got it used. Put one on a AC unit temporarily while I had the right part come in.
 
My 10HP 16 year old chugs along like a regular PP. Anyone beat this length of service with ZERO issues?

We could ask member "Hardplates". He has my old Blue one. it MAY be older?

I bought it used, then the new "white" cased one, didn't need two once I figured I needed an RPC as well "regardless" and paralleling is only shown in the manual for the newer ones, same build, not mix nd match.

If I recorded the build-date of it at all, I don't know where.
 
Considerably cheaper means only one thing. Compare brands and country of origin.

That's why I try to buy parts through as many middle men as possible. All of the markups along the way add a lot of quality to the part.
 
My 10HP 16 year old chugs along like a regular PP. Anyone beat this length of service with ZERO issues?

31 year old 5 hp one. Zero issues as you say. Installed it shortly after getting the house, mortgage was paid off two years ago.

Conv.jpg


It pre dates the internet. Probably someday I'll have to change out the capacitors in it. Oh wait, forgot. There are none.
 
It pre dates the internet.

Not by 20 years, it does not, junior. I have Honeywell 6 spares from around 1970.
First all digital link 'round the whole Earth was completed 1898. All since have simply been continuous "upgrades" and protocol changes.

Or so some thinkle PEEP they are "upgrades"!

Ga-ron-tee adverhooring wasn't a factor whilst John Pender yet lived! Blame Bill Marconi for dragging THAT in!

:(
 
Not by 20 years, it does not,

1981, at GTE labs, the 9600 baud link had no external connection. 1984, I was introduced to a novel idea, e-mail at TJ Watson labs. Sometime later my boss says "come in here and look at this - there's a way to inspect computer files in a romote location. I'm looking at files in Russia." [1]

And I remember thinking, 'that'll be great. For NERDS.'

Yep, I think he was running mosaic.

Related this to a co-worker once. "Don't beat yourself up over this, I recall thinking why in hell you'd want a CAMERA on your phone?"

And remember - a man made a LOT of money when he figured out you didn't need a luggage trolley for your suitcase. Put the wheels right on the thing! He was a pilot, who watched flight attendents struggling with their luggage all the time.

[1] a common phrase in our house now. When is the store open, how to we drive to this place, what's the menu here... "Oh we're going to have to "Inspect Computer Files in a Remote Location!"
 
I recall thinking why in hell you'd want a CAMERA on your phone?"
...or a graphical display of the Air Battle on your console? Or a Bendayed half-page newspaper graphic moved coast to coast?

ARPANET/DARPANET/Internet wasn't the first NETWORK. Only the first to use packet routing.

Graphnet was my first 'civilian' ISP. Cable Address:"WBHACKER". I had something to kick around with other early contributors? We'd ring each other, voice phone, actually TALK to each other.. send the TINY machine-code, ASM, or forth files over TTY. "C" was still a muckinfess, only ever got WORSE in my view!

An RDM coupler, pre "Carterphone Decision". Geisco, Compuserve - a link to CICS/VTAM and IBM's network soon became the gold. One was given guest status at several Universities, "shell" accoounts, "C" list on Vaxen, HP MPE-3000. IBM's et al. we got used to IIRC SEVEN different keyboards? 5 level Baudot "for a while", 6 bit FIELDATA, MAJMAP 1100 for a loooong time, 7 bit ASCII, 8 bit BCDIC & EBCDIC, links and Motherhips..dialed them long distance, soon onto uunet, Fidonet, the well, netwire, DECUS... each islands by subject and community interest, but that "partial" compartmentalization amongst experts WAS more efficient than the pool of an infinite number of open sewers for fools the 'net was to become.

Irony? Many years later, it fell to me to debrief the last Carterphone CEO, shut it down, vanish the remains of it back into our other C&W properties.

It was also my personal project to buy Graphnet for C&W. But we did not.

HQ turned me down. Said it was a great plan, instant money-spinner just off the back of migrating them onto OUR spare wire, and cutting that heavy spend dramatically. By then I had been on C&W "nailed up" wire & glass .. and @ibm.net for dial-up long-since arredy.

But C&W didn't have the Management talent free to execute the plan.

I was pissed. Figured to do it meself in spare time, let my staff do the heavy-lifting. Which was NOT "heavy".

Not for long. C&W had a set of much more urgent priorities in work, and were "short of talent" because I was the one they were handing THAT blivet to for sorting!

:(

Never a dull moment...

Oh.. capacitors? Often good for fifty and more years, Mallory my favourites.

Then again? Most were in Brute Force and Bloody Ignorance analog linear Dee Cee PSU service. With big fat CHOKES inline ahead of the first stage and each interstage, thereafter, if not also the final.

NOT in high-ripple AC service with switching artifacts off pseudo-sine-wave hammering the piss out of them. Different chemistry. Different work environment. Different life-cycle, longevity according.
 
There's a lot of lore in the antique radio board about this. Re-forming electrolytics, what to replace before powering sets without wiping out unobtanium parts like power transformers. Most electrolytics will go bad and certain types (plastic an wax impregnated types are notorious.

Antique Radio Forums • Index page

Paper, WATER, and ignorant BORAX were the "notorious" ones. At least they didn't smell bad.

It was the paper and some sort of oily/solvent ones (ISTR Phenol furfural was cheap and had a usefully high "k"?) that blew-up and filled a fair-sized area with stinky confetti.

The construction and chemistry of those in today's VFD and P-P is hardly even related at all.

Sizes are way smaller, charge density way higher on modern ones, polarized or not. Most have a fusible link built-in. Not a lot of them "detonate" these days. Bulge a tad, go "open", rather.
 
It's worth pointing out older capacitors weren't sealed well and the capacitor plague in the late 90s-2000s (bad electrolyte mix resulting in corrosion and gas generation) have reduced our perception of electrolytic capacitor lifetime. That combined with poorly designed goods that allow the capacitors to be too hot for too long, and the tendency for the oxide layer to deteriorate after long periods of disuse doesn't help.


If you use modern capacitors from reputable manufacturers, keep them cool (far from heat sources, but especially not exceeding their ripple current rating) and let them gently rebuild their oxide layer after long periods of disuse, they will last pretty much forever.
 
.. capacitor plague in the late 90s-2000s (bad electrolyte mix resulting in corrosion and gas generation)

That one was such a 'time bomb" we started expensing rackmount servers as R&D experiments instead of capitalizing them at all.

Bench run for six months, rack-run for six months. Sit as cold standby for six month, off to scrap for the MB, PSU, and RAID.... 'coz drive PCBs used a cap or two as well.

Didn't hurt the biz plan at all. They were techincally "obsolete" the day they were first powered-up, regardless. But "obsolete doesn't mean "useless".

Until solid Tantalums displaced the unpredictable goods, it was just cheaper than UNscheduled downtime for the priority traffic.

Eventually the mystery was solved.

A stolen recipe for the electrolyte, thieves unaware the OEM creators had cleverly held back the very existence of a key ingredient from the main document.
 








 
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