Bad caps documentary - very good

[Ice-Tea]

... only claim a 50,000 hour life for them.

50,000 is really very little. Only 5.7 years of continuous work.

For your information and as others have said: this is for maximum stress. As a rule of thumb, it doubles with every 10°C. So if it is 50k@105°C, then it will be about 40yrs or so when the cap is at 75°C.

[EPAIII]

Cheap and well? Yes, cheap and well can be a possibility. It just takes time.

Of course in the commercial world time is money so there goes the cheap. Cheap and well seems to belong to the hobby crowd. But I'm retired so I guess I also belong to that crowd.

But even a commercial design can be cheap to make and also perform well. You just need to spread the development time over a lot of units.

But in engineering circles it is well known that every thing is a compromise. The famous saying is,
"I can make it fast. I can make it cheap. I can make it well. PICK ANY TWO!"
And that is the truth, you only get to pick TWO, not all three.

Cheap and well is also possible? 

[coppice]

... only claim a 50,000 hour life for them.

50,000 is really very little. Only 5.7 years of continuous work.

For your information and as others have said: this is for maximum stress. As a rule of thumb, it doubles with every 10°C. So if it is 50k@105°C, then it will be about 40yrs or so when the cap is at 75°C.

That is the picture with wet electrolytics. The question was about dry electrolytics. The dry electrolytics, from Philips and others, which we used in the late 80s when they first appeared claimed extreme lives, without this kind of temperature allowance. Now the electrolytics going into good quality motherboards claim to be dry, yet quote a 50k hour lifetime.

[wraper]

... only claim a 50,000 hour life for them.

50,000 is really very little. Only 5.7 years of continuous work.

For your information and as others have said: this is for maximum stress. As a rule of thumb, it doubles with every 10°C. So if it is 50k@105°C, then it will be about 40yrs or so when the cap is at 75°C.

That is the picture with wet electrolytics. The question was about dry electrolytics. The dry electrolytics, from Philips and others, which we used in the late 80s when they first appeared claimed extreme lives, without this kind of temperature allowance. Now the electrolytics going into good quality motherboards claim to be dry, yet quote a 50k hour lifetime.

SAL electrolytic capacitors and aluminum polymer are not the same thing, SAL are closer to MnO₂ Tantalum capacitors FWIW. Also It's not like SAL have infinite lifetime either, although they can survive higher temperature. It should be noted that aluminum polymer capacitors have their endurance spec at extremely high ripple current (way higher than SAL of similar dimensions).
https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/12199.pdf

Extremely long useful life, 20000 hours/125 °C