Are these worth saving ?
- Thread starter coincard
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You've got good caps of several types mixed with worthless foil caps.
The long cylindrical red ones are tube capacitors, those are ceramic often coated with silver and/or palladium. The dark blue 'droplet' looking capacitors are tantalum caps. The very small shiny yellow and blue ones are likely resin-coated MLCCs, with nickel legs and palladium-silver electrodes.
In the 4th picture, the silvery tube one with the bulge of metal on its left-hand end is almost certainly a tantalum capacitor. It could have either a tantalum or silver casing. The blue one touching it is a tantalum drop capacitor, and just below the 2 identical little yellow ones are one of the types of resin-coated MLCCs.
The little boxy yellow ones made of hard plastic are probably also tantalum caps. Break one open. If you see a little block of black in there, that's sintered tantalum powder.
All rectangular plastic boxy ones which are white and blue... worthless aluminum foil or aluminum-coated stacks of polymer sheets inside.
The long cylindrical red ones are tube capacitors, those are ceramic often coated with silver and/or palladium. The dark blue 'droplet' looking capacitors are tantalum caps. The very small shiny yellow and blue ones are likely resin-coated MLCCs, with nickel legs and palladium-silver electrodes.
In the 4th picture, the silvery tube one with the bulge of metal on its left-hand end is almost certainly a tantalum capacitor. It could have either a tantalum or silver casing. The blue one touching it is a tantalum drop capacitor, and just below the 2 identical little yellow ones are one of the types of resin-coated MLCCs.
The little boxy yellow ones made of hard plastic are probably also tantalum caps. Break one open. If you see a little block of black in there, that's sintered tantalum powder.
All rectangular plastic boxy ones which are white and blue... worthless aluminum foil or aluminum-coated stacks of polymer sheets inside.
coincard
Active member
Thank you very much for the information, so basically keep everything except the yellow, white and blue plastic box looking things. I broke open several of the hard plastic or resin yellow ones and it looks like a silver colored ball inside....
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After removing the legs, these sometimes have non-magnetic MLCC's inside. They can contain Silver and Palladium.
coincard
Active member
Thanks for the info, the blue one, is that a little plastic type box or ceramic?
Thanks
Dave
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The little silver ball is odd. I've never seen a component like those. It could be a rare capacitor type I've only ever heard of where a tantalum core is totally encased in silver. On the other hand, maybe it's some strange type of diode.
Do you recall the board symbol or abbreviation next to the parts? That will tell exactly what it is.
Edit: I searched through my tantalum caps and found 3 like this. They do indeed have a silver-wrapped ball of tantalum powder inside.
Do you recall the board symbol or abbreviation next to the parts? That will tell exactly what it is.
Edit: I searched through my tantalum caps and found 3 like this. They do indeed have a silver-wrapped ball of tantalum powder inside.
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Ohiogoldfever
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I’ve never heard someone mention the red tube capacitors as possibly containing PMs. I’ll have to rest some of what I have.
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The ones circled in red are tantulum capacitors. The ones with red arrows are resistors, old dog bone types. I doubt the resistors have any PM value whatsoever. The deeper blue capacitors are Mylar film capacitors, worthless.
Is there are close up of the light blue and white box capacitors with the label legible?
I deal specifically in vintage electronics for a living, I know quite a lot about most of this stuff.
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Simple. Took pair of pliers and try to snap them in half. Ceramic ones snap easily and you will clearly see piece of solid ceramic inside plastic or filled resin coating. These are monolithic ceramic caps or MLCCs, depending on which you happen to find. If you remove legs completely and ceramic is non magnetic - these are containing PMs - silver, and if you are lucky palladium.
If it is hard to snap, and you can see oval shaped roll of foils, to the bin they go - foil caps, just Al, practically worthless, no PMs.
Tantalum ones are mainly obvious, as they have distinct shapes and significant weight due to tantalum, But if you snap one, you will find silver electrode inside, usually coating crumbly tantalum piece. Some even aren´t silver, but lead alloy dipped pieces of tantalum-magnesium sponge.
If it is hard to snap, and you can see oval shaped roll of foils, to the bin they go - foil caps, just Al, practically worthless, no PMs.
Tantalum ones are mainly obvious, as they have distinct shapes and significant weight due to tantalum, But if you snap one, you will find silver electrode inside, usually coating crumbly tantalum piece. Some even aren´t silver, but lead alloy dipped pieces of tantalum-magnesium sponge.
Only some of the plastic box ones have the MLCC's. Most of the ones I find are aluminum foil type cap's. If I see them on a board I'll snip the plastic off, If it's a aluminum foil type I wont bother with the others on the board. If one on the board is foil type, chances are the rest are too.
I have found those box type MLCC's in different colors, not just blue. But like I said, most are the foil type cap's... cutting them open is the only way to know.
It's usually the metal coating inside the tube. But Auggiedog says these particular components are resistors. His close up of the picture shows that they're solid rods, not tubes.
coincard
Active member
I will try and get a photo that shows the part numbers on the little yellow, white and blue box looking ones.
coincard
Active member
I think I have a better understanding of what to keep and what to ditch, many thanks to everyone who replied. There are so many different shapes and sizes of each component its hard to know what is worth saving and what is not.
Has anyone ever done a photo chart of all the different types of components and what they contain ? It might be a worth while adventure for someone with better knowledge than me to put together, I know many of us newbies, including myself, would be happy to pay for such a thing to save time and give us more confidence in what we are doing. Just a thought, many thanks
There are some charts, but I've never seen one that has everything. There are hundreds of variants of components, especially with older stuff. And some look identical, but are made of totally different materials. Especially MLCCs. Those have to be tested with a magnet, but even then it can be tricky because in some during the 'intermediate years' there were various electrode combinations and alloys. Some weakly magnetic MLCCs can have silver or palladium in one or both electrodes. Some are a nickel-silver alloy that's weakly magnetic. I've found this by testing graded samples based on attraction to different magnet strengths.
I just lump all the weakly magnetic ones together now, since there's so much variability in them. Easier just to process them as a single batch.
