"Chuck Harris" wrote in message
...
Phil Nelson wrote:
People can honestly disagree about reforming, but personally I have had
poor luck with it. Some caps will reform, but I found that they were not
reliable for the long haul.

Why risk frying an expensive power transformer just to save a few bucks
worth of electrolytics?

Why risk frying an expensive power transformer by turning on an antique
radio?

If you reform the caps the way I said to, you will know before you finish
if the cap is going to be good for the long haul. I have never had one
fail that correctly went through a reformation.

That said, I have lost electrolytics when I have tried the trick of using
a variac to "reform" the whole power supply before applying full mains
voltage. I am quite sure that most of them would have reformed correctly
if I hadn't skimped on the process.

-Chuck

If I'm going to go to all the trouble to remove a cap I'm going to replace
it not play patty cake with it and take chances

--

Clif Holland KA5IPF
www.avvid.com

Clif Holland wrote:
"Chuck Harris" wrote in message


That said, I have lost electrolytics when I have tried the trick of using
a variac to "reform" the whole power supply before applying full mains
voltage. I am quite sure that most of them would have reformed correctly
if I hadn't skimped on the process.

-Chuck

If I'm going to go to all the trouble to remove a cap I'm going to replace
it not play patty cake with it and take chances


Why would you remove the cap to reform it?

On tube circuits, you can do the job in place, just don't fire
up the filaments.

The important point to reforming is that you don't supply buckets of
current to the subject capacitor. If you do, the capacitor will create
little localized hot-spots where the oxide is too thin.

-Chuck