Capacitor Plague
Over the years, probably many of you have experienced failures of consumer electronic devices. Power supplies, internet routers, game consoles and personal computers. During the last 12 months I have had an unusual number of such failures. Two satellite receivers ( Kathrein UFS-910 ). Three plug computers ( Sheeva Plug Development Kits ). Three wireless routers ( ZyXel Ethernet-Over-Powerline ). That is eight devices in one year. Pretty unusual statistics. Enough to trigger my curiosity to conduct a forensic investigation. All those failures obviously had an number of things in common. Firstly, all failures were at power supplies circuits. Bam, and all of the sudden the electronics were not receiving the regulated supply voltage. I quickly recalled the failed devices were running quite hot prior to the failures. After opening the cases I found burst electrolytic capacitors. And replacing the capacitors fixed the problems. First - I thought - bad design. Electrolytic capacitors are quit...