Re-Forming Electrolytics

[Larry]

Sure does!   Electrolytics have their dialectric layer
"formed" in manufacturing and if left idle, will lose
some or much of it.  If you punch through the weakened
dialectric, ti is TOAST!  But, you often can reform it
as you described below.

Larry
N3HLL


--- Rinkie & Ron Pollack <rinkies at ROADRUNNER.COM>
wrote:

> There has been quite a bit of discussion on
> reforming electrolytics with a
> variac, milliammeter,  transformer, and rectifier.
> 
> I have a couple of old Heathkit Capacitor Checkers
> which work quite well.
> In addition to the bridge circuit for checking
> capacitance, they have a
> feature for checking leakage using variable voltage
> up to 600V (I think).
> It is current limited using a resistor, and a "magic
> eye" tube to indicate
> leakage.  I've found that old electrolytics
> initially show leakage,  but
> often show no leakage after a few minutes at a lower
> voltage, the eye opens,
> indicating no leakage.  By increasing voltage
> incrementally, many times the
> cap will show no leakage after a few minutes.
> 
> I'm not sure if this qualifies as reforming the
> capacitor.  I'm not much of
> a technical guy;  does anyone have any thoughts on
> this?
> 
> Ron K2RP
> 
>
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