Breaking in Teflon Caps

[Stefanoo]

Hi folks,

I have some Aura Teflon capacitors and I need to brake in.
Audience suggests minimum 200hours to 500hours.
I have connected all the capacitors in parallel respecting their direction (they have red and black wires accordingly to audience the black goes to the lower impedance point) as a low pass filter.
My wawetek signal generator can mix DC and AC signal so I am sweeping a 10Vpk-pk sine wave with a 7V DC offset.
I am wondering if this is a good set up for break in.

If anybody have some suggestion, please go ahead.


Many thanks.

[SY]

Since you have a DC offset, make sure you reverse the cap every few hours, otherwise it will break in uni-directionally and cause smearing, a loss of detail, and warts.

[syn08]

Originally Posted by SY

Since you have a DC offset, make sure you reverse the cap every few hours, otherwise it will break in uni-directionally and cause smearing, a loss of detail, and warts.

Every few hours is usually to long. The crystalline matrix of the teflon dielectric will permanently stretch, causing irreversible damages to the cap sonics. To provide the smoothest possible sound, you'd better reverse them every 15 minutes, You'll notice the first positive sonic effects after about a week.

[Wavebourn]

I don't know about Aura caps, but speaking of Ftoroplast caps that are very similar...
I had internships on some Russian plants, all of them have special procedure in QC departments; break-in time used depending on complexity of the equipment, i.e. an equipment with higher MTBF required more hours to break-in: the theory states that probability of failure goes down exponentially with time. However, theory of probability is a spoiled lady, also military equipment required break-in in certain conditions like vibrations, accelerations, hot/cold temperature, moisture, that are more aggressive than any audiophile environment, so you may assume your teflon caps broken in if they are called Ftoroplast caps, and have some special break-in marks, like a rhombus or a star stamped on it.

[Curly Woods]

Originally Posted by SY

Since you have a DC offset, make sure you reverse the cap every few hours, otherwise it will break in uni-directionally and cause smearing, a loss of detail, and warts.

Why is it that those that can not hear always comment first when a guy asks a question like this? Just solder them in and let the system play music. You will notice then get worse after the first 100 hours, but they will gradually become coherent again and steadily improve with use. Teflon is the only cap to use as a coupling cap, IMO

[Stefanoo]

Hi sorry....this seems to be a little bit complex.
I have stopped the burning in process since I am not yet sure of how to properly burn them in.
I have let them "cook" for few hours on one direction.

My thought are the following:

If I am going to use them on the actual circuit as coupling caps, and respect polarity i.e. outer foil to the lowest impedance point, they will block DC which will be always the same so I don't understand what is the point of changing polarity.

SY suggested to reverse the cap every 15 minutes but
1) this means to stare at the caps for a couple of weeks and this is almost impossible and I don't know how many people have actually done that

2)reversing the cap would put the outer foil one time to the lowest impedance point (suggested direction) and another time not....I don't know if this is good or not.
I don't know if yuo meant to say, that I shuld alternate the polarity of the DC offet.

I do agree with curly wood...but I don't know now....

why should i break them in changing all these polarity and then when the cap will be soldered on the circuit will work on only one direciton? huummm I am a bit confused and I wouldn't like to ruin the potential of these wonderful and expensive caps.

thank you all for your posts

[SY]

Why is it that those that can not hear

Have you tried what I suggested or are you just hypothesizing?

[Stefanoo]

Originally Posted by SY

Have you tried what I suggested or are you just hypothesizing?

Please guys don't get into an argument for this.

Anyways can you explain what you mean by reverse your cap?
Do you mean change polarity of the DC offset or changing the direction of the cap?

I would think that the cap should keep the same direction and in case change polarity of the DC....but then....the real circuit has the same DC offet, thus real condition of use are fixed also because if it would change polarity each few hours...I mean I would call that circuit a bit unstable

[Peter Daniel]

Stefano, you posted your question in a wrong section of the forum. Didn't you notice that we have now "Tweakers Sanctuary" and if those 3 guys start messing with you again, you can probably report their posts to moderators

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/tweakers-sanctuary/

[jackinnj]

Originally Posted by SY

Since you have a DC offset, make sure you reverse the cap every few hours, otherwise it will break in uni-directionally and cause smearing, a loss of detail, and warts.

Silly wabbit, fwogs cause warts