On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:26:14 -0600, "Henry Kolesnik"
wrote:

Over the last few years I've acquired quite a few consumer electronincs pcbs
including TVs, VCRs, stereos, etc, so when I discovered that I needed a
tantalum to repair some test equipment I was going to salvage a tantalum. I
couldn't find one anywhere, so I assume they're too expensive or too
unrelaible for high end consumer electronics. A couple of the boards were
from my personal stuff purchased new. One example is a MGA Mitsubishi rear
projection TV that operated flawlessly for nearly 20 years of daily use.
Most of my test equipment comes from hamfests and is surplus after becoming
obsolete and non-operative in less than 20 years. That leads me to wonder
what the real story is behind tantalum capacitors. What do the experts have
to say?
tnx
hank wd5jfr


We often use surface-mount tantalums on high-density, high-cost
boards. They are very reliable (don't dry out like aluminums) if used
carefully, but high peak currents can ignite them, so they are
generally a bad idea for bypassing power rails.

Polymer aluminums (don't dry out) or polymer tantalums (don't explode)
seem like a good idea, but I haven't tried them yet.

I think multilayer ceramics are pushing 100 uF these days.

John