Mouser and Digi-Key Capacitor Search Help
 

I never had this problem when I purchased from a catalog, but I just went to these to sites and they have all of these search criteria that basically got me nowhere.

We are mostly here because we like vintage equipment, so lets say I am going to order some 10 mfd @ 400VDC electrolytic caps for a project and lets say in axial package. This should not be hard to find and I guess i'm looking in the wrong places, but there are 10 criteria under 20 different types of capacitors.

I simply want a darned simple thing! Or at least to get in the ball park and then look at different manufacturers and what is offered at or near that value. The closest to simple electrolytic seems to be aluminum. I don't care if it is made out of sand really! I just want a replacement part! :scratch2:

I hope I didn't throw away my old catalogs I saved from when I purchased just a few years back. It wasn't hard at all. Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong and possibly suggest some strategy here. Also, I will want to get some small value (used to be "orange drop") caps to replace foil/paper units of old. Decent quality companies for the price? etc... :thmbsp:

Thanks everyone!!

Just to help anyone as I ask for help I want to ad that there is a company called Surplus Sales out of Nebraska that has a great interface that is really straight forward to search AND they specialize in vintage and hard to find electronics. They have tons tubes as well (of course).

I saw the company mentioned in another thread/topic and checked it out before Mouser and Digi-Key. I just wanted to do some price comparisons, but my first post tells where I got with that.......

I wish I could correct my misspelling of Digi-Key in the thread title. Sorry....

It is a rather straightforward interface once you get the hang of it but daunting at first. Aluminum Electrolytic is the category you want. You can initially ignore a lot of the criteria and only select the primary ones. Select 10uf, Axial lead, then select both 400v, and 450v by holding down the "control" key while clicking on the options. 450 volt is more of a standard value than 400 volt. Then click on "Apply Filters" and you should get a manageable list. If you want then to further narrow it down by tolerance, size or temperature you can apply those filters.

http://www.mouser.com/Passive-Compon...yzskniZ1z0z819

Relevant post I made on the topic:

http://www.videokarma.org/showpost.p...0&postcount=24

The trick with the mouser/digi-key parametric searches is don't give them too many things at once, and always remember to make sure "in stock" is checked. So for orange drops you'd go to capacitors, pick a voltage first, then a value, then radial/axial/etc, and then finally narrow it down to film.

Not totally off-topic, Mouser seems to be the better place to get caps. I've found odd values there that Digi-Key doesn't stock, such as 15 and .22 mfd.

Yeah, but if you want Rubycon or the very interesting EDLC units from Nippon-ChemiCon you're buying them from Digi-Key.

(My Mouser to Digi-Key ratio is probably 10:1 in terms of parcels shipped, not in terms of $ spent.)

What special about those? Don't mind me, just trying to get educated about this.

The most special thing about EDLC from NCC is that you can actually buy a 2,400F capacitor. (Yes, 2.4 KiloFarads.) :yikes: Less than 100 miliohms ESR too. Stand back!

Rubycon isn't anything "special" but they do make a very good product for a very nice price.

EDLC:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electri...ayer_capacitor
Wow!
jr

Fixed that for you.:yes:

Imagine charging up one of those and tossing it to someone.

I guess that Rubycon chemist that defected to the Chinese with that special electrolyte formula must now be working for Nippon Chemi-Con; (LOL)...

Tom (PK)

NCC is Japanese though. Here's a handy reference for good cap / bad cap by country of origin... http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/print...Capacitors/595

First thanks Eric for correcting my misspelled title. I'm sort of a stickler for internet users and text messagers butchering the English language. And it really makes someone come off as smart as the errors often make them sound.

And thanks to everyone else for helping me and likely others. For the record, I understand the need for these companies to get the more critical criteria involved with components for modern equipment where it matters. Unfortunately I work with a lot of that stuff for a living, but frankly we don't spend much time doing component level troubleshooting where I work. I will get that bench tech job one day I hope if there are any to be had in or near my area.

One great thing about what we do here and what technology has become is that passive components are fairly straight forward and size is virtually never an issue. It makes it really easy most of the time to squeeze the meatballs into the spaghetti if you will. Sure, I wish often that they still made multi-section cans in electrolytics that I could pop in. They can still be found, but one must wonder how long they have been on a shelf. So far I have not tried "stuffing" cans as they say, but I would like to try it sometime for even more de-clutter under the chassis. First I have to find out the method of cutting a can open and being able to close it up without having it look hastily cobbled. I know the info. is here on this site, so I just need to find it. As well I'm sure there are videos on YouTube and instruction on other sites. I like sticking with this site; my favorite. Thanks again and add more info if anyone wishes to.