Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: John R Walliker Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design Subject: Re: Survivor! Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2024 11:28:16 +0000 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 24 Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2024 11:27:26 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="8e2b9dc7d73a3c506d6dfe47146be46d"; logging-data="3017555"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/JK5MDfbmKS30fpn0O5EnPlDlF/R3AryA=" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird Cancel-Lock: sha1:vw8/9aFEODpkd9Ly2ON09CvKtOI= Content-Language: en-GB In-Reply-To: Bytes: 2179 On 20/03/2024 15:22, Bertrand Sindri wrote: > Cursitor Doom wrote: >> Yesterday I had 2 minutes to waste so I blew up another electrolytic >> capacitor - or rather I *tried* to. A 10uF 10V cap across the output >> of a variac with Vo set to 240VAC. There was a considerable *pop* >> but no bang and it turned out the T3.15 Amp fuse in the variac had >> blown spectacularly - but the cap had survived unscathed! Tested >> fine for capacitance and ESR! I never would have believed it. Just >> wondering how the hell it didn't get destroyed... > > Obviously it was able to survive the overcurrent situation for long > enough to blow the fuse in the variac. Since, as usual, you've left > off all useful information (i.e., make and model of cap) we can't > comment any further. > > The fuse also did it's job, which is to protect downstream components > from overcurrent situations by blowing before the downstream items > themselves blow up. > > More importantly the fuse protected the variac. They are very intolerant of even quite modest overloads. John