So I have a strong dislike of adhesive being used with components on a PCB.
As far as mounting options for for PCB capacitors, the only thing I have seen is that the better caps like Sprague sometimes have more pins, I think its mostly for mis insertion protection but I suspect they are more robust.
Given the fact that most capacitors like newer SMD ones already have a little plastic base,
Would it be reasonable to assume a regular low end cheap 3d printer would have sufficient manufacturing tolerances to produce small brackets that go over capacitors to fasten them to a PCB to match or exceed the protection offered by silastic compound?
I thought about doing this by hand before but its quite a lot of parts to make it right out of metal so it looks decent and has a minimal form factor and it seems like a good job for a 3d printer if good filament is used, with the only problem being weakness at high temperatures. I mean without stamping or advanced manufacturing processes,
my high end home use idea was to use metal plates with holes in them. So you would have a top roof plate that compresses the capacitors (or multiple caps) with 4 threaded rods (soldered to the top plate) acting as legs, with another metal plate inserted over the rods with holes in it to act like capacitor brackets that would slide over the capacitors and through the threaded rods and be soldered in place at the right height, then have the threaded rods go through the PCB and be attached to the base with nuts from the bottom, this way it could be done without spacers, but the problem would be that you would need to remove the PCB completely to access the capacitors, otherwise if you made spacers you could remove it from the top but then you have alot of small pieces.
But this assembly would be very stiff so I am wondering how would it compare to a solution with silastic (which acts as a damper) since its flexible, and if a 'top hat' that is fastened to the PCB with bolts made with a 3d printer could work.
You would need to account for the burst disk on the capacitors and make holes on top of any solution btw if you do it so you don't make a bomb.
Would you still need some kind of vibration rubber gasket thing between the top of the capacitors, and another one around the perimeter of the fastener? Could it cause unforeseen consequences?
My metal scafolding idea would be pretty open so I don't think it would affect the thermal performance too much, but the plastic??