General > General Technical Chat

DIGIKEY sold me 8 Years Old electrolytic caps?!?

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rsjsouza:
As a hobbyist purchaser, I also have gotten older capacitors from reputable distributors and they are still working fine. At work, however, I have seen contracts establishing limits to the earliest mfg date of the supply chain, but your account needs to be significant to the manufacturer/distributor.

Tomorokoshi:
Given the parts were listed as an "Obsolete item", it may be worth it to evaluate the parts. Substitution of parts in either repair or a new build can sometimes be an issue depending on how customers track their BOMs, if approvals are involved, etc.

As it happens, a couple years ago I had this situation:
A customer had a malfunction in their system. Visual inspection showed slight expansion of the pressure relief on the Panasonic SMT 47 uF electrolytic on the board. The board was 10 years old. The customer got very concerned and jumped to the conclusion that it was the cause of their issues. The expansion was noted on local examples of similar vintage and date code, and institutional memory verified that it was there from the time of production.

As they were at a remote location, visiting the site was not possible. However, they happened to have an LCR meter available. I made measurements of several boards, both old and new, along with measurements of NOS capacitors of the same vintage, new capacitors of the same part number, and similar parts from other suppliers. I then requested measurements from their board, leaving the part in-circuit.

The measurements from the customer were the same as what I got with all variations of parts. There was no performance change between their board, my examples, my NOS parts, and new parts from both Panasonic and others.

Examples of all the parts were sent to Panasonic in Japan, along with the example circuit board that showed an expanding top. The NOS parts were evaluated, along with the questionable part. All measured very similarly. Their evaluation was that the parts were overheated during the soldering process at the manufacturer. As it happens, we had moved to a different board assembler soon after that initial run due to other quality issues.

I believe the problem at the customer site was tracked down to EMC issues.

jpanhalt:
Thank you for identifying the part.  It seems you bought an obsolete part at a very good price compared to current production.

Your first post implies nothing about buying obsolete parts.   The implication  was quite the opposite.

--- Quote ---So, as the title says, I just had some caps delivered last week, and turns out, they're about 7.5-8 years old. I always though electrolytic caps purchased by big suppliers would be no more than a couple of years old, ...
--- End quote ---

What's you complaint?  Did you not read the "obsolete" part of the description?  What's your motive in trashing DigiKey here rather than dealing with it directly?  Seems more likely you want a freebie.  Maybe DK will do that for you.  Will you then apologize for your mistake in ordering them?  I doubt it.

ColdPower:

--- Quote from: jpanhalt on December 21, 2020, 08:48:24 pm ---Thank you for identifying the part.  It seems you bought an obsolete part at a very good price compared to current production.

Your first post implies nothing about buying obsolete parts.   The implication  was quite the opposite.

--- Quote ---So, as the title says, I just had some caps delivered last week, and turns out, they're about 7.5-8 years old. I always though electrolytic caps purchased by big suppliers would be no more than a couple of years old, ...
--- End quote ---

What's you complaint?  Did you not read the "obsolete" part of the description?  What's your motive in trashing DigiKey here rather than dealing with it directly?  Seems more likely you want a freebie.  Maybe DK will do that for you.  Will you then apologize for your mistake in ordering them?  I doubt it.

--- End quote ---

Why don't you first read carefully and then figure out who ate your breakfast, as it sure ain't me! If you only woke up this morning to look for arguments, look elsewhere. Will you apologise once you actually read the topic?

jpanhalt:
1) I can read.
2) I read your post.
3) I saw no reason for trashing one of the two distributors hobbyists have to deal with.
4) Why didn't you contact DigiKey with your dissatisfaction?

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