Dave blows up some tantalum and electrolytic capacitors in front of his new 300fps Sanyo Xacti high speed camcorder!

KEMET has introduced the T496 Hi-Rel Fused Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) MnO2 Series of tantalum surface mount capacitors.

The devices are ideal for use in high reliability applications where a capacitor short will disrupt the overall performance of the system. The internal fuse in the capacitor results in a fail open condition.

Applications include decoupling and filtering in computing, telecommunication, defense, and industrial end applications requiring a built-in fuse capability. This includes filtering for point-of-load and switch-mode power supplies.

A heroic Reg reader who battled an exploding computer to save his son’s homework (and possibly his life) has written in to share the harrowing tale of a power supply unit gone MAD.

Yesterday my son was sitting at his desk working on a school project, when he heard a loud bang. He said it sounded like a large fire cracker. Immediately following the minor explosion, smoke rose out of the back of his desk. When I came into the room small flames were jumping out of the case’s side vent and the back of the PC.

After examining the singed machine, I discovered that the relatively new power supply had been the source of the fire. I should have known better than to buy a cheap, no name power supply. I don’t really know what caused the explosion and resulting fire

This made me to replace all the original capacitors with newer better quality capacitors. After this fix everything works again perfectly and I can expect some more years of life for this PC.

I just found a good picture series on repairing Samsung TV power supply
(broken capacitors there):
https://picasaweb.google.com/115284777987595970239/SamsungVirtalahteenElkojenVaihto?authuser=0&feat=directlink