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AnonTechie (2275)
Journal of AnonTechie (2275)
Eric Schlaepfer was trying to fix a broken piece of test equipment when he came across the cause of the problem—a troubled tantalum capacitor. The component had somehow shorted out, and he wanted to know why. So he polished it down for a look inside. He never found the source of the short, but he and his collaborator, Windell H. Oskay, discovered something even better: a breathtaking hidden world inside electronics. What followed were hours and hours of polishing, cleaning, and photography that resulted in Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components (No Starch Press, 2022), an excerpt of which follows. As the authors write, everything about these components is deliberately designed to meet specific technical needs, but that design leads to “accidental beauty: the emergent aesthetics of things you were never expected to see.”
From a book that spans the wide world of electronics, what we at IEEE Spectrum found surprisingly compelling were the insides of things we don’t spend much time thinking about, passive components. Transistors, LEDs, and other semiconductors may be where the action is, but the simple physics of resistors, capacitors, and inductors have their own sort of splendor.
I found the pictures of various passive components very interesting, maybe you would too !!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Sunday January 15, @11:31AM
I know how the various components that I have used are constructed - but of course with only a few exceptions I had rarely seen them.
I enjoyed looking at the images which also held a few surprises for me. I see IEEE reports almost daily but I was wondering why I had never seen this one - then I noticed that it was only released 18 hours ago! Nice find.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday January 16, @06:04AM
As a lifetime hardware hacker, I've probably seen the innards of pretty much every electronic component. Some open by themselves (little exhibitionists!) and some needed some sort of help, accidentally or intentionally. I very much like the cross-section cutaways.
Since TFA mentions it, and for anyone who cares, a few years ago I got involved building and refurbishing some electronic instrumentation that's used in the nuclear power industry. It has some tantalum caps. I've replaced them now and then, here and there in many electronic gear, finding them pretty close to dead shorted.
A good friend who is also an electronics geek hates tantalums. He got roped into repairing someone's guitar amp, and it was full of tantalum caps. Aforementioned friend has noticed them being kind of noisy (electrically) and not good for audio.
Anyway, wanting to do especially good work on nuke stuff, I did a lot of research on tantalums. I found some longevity data, and it turns out if you use ones that are rated for at least twice the maximum voltage they'll ever see, they should last essentially forever.
In every case of a failed tantalum, they were being run fairly close to their rated voltage, including quite a few "phantom powered" (48VDC) microphones.
That rule of thumb doesn't apply to aluminum electrolytics. If you run them at half the rated voltage, supposedly they will degrade and fail.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 17, @03:42PM
Troubled tantalum capacitors just need a bit of therapy. They should be encouraged to see these pictures which reveal their true inner beauty.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...