Box o' Capacitors: Is it worth it?

[llamaboy]

This post is regarding this deal that I just couldn't pass up:
Box of Capacitors-The Electronic Goldmine

Did curiosity kill the cat?



Just looking at that, I'd say no. But let's take it apart.



(I'm assuming the box cutter was used to get the feet into the box.)

This is everything it came with, all laid out. Got some nice blue ERO KP1832's (6400 pF), which (don't kill me, please), I just tried on a CMoy and I don't think I can go back to the ones Tangent reccomends. I know it's overkill, but wow...

Those white Aerovox films range from 3-3.3 uF, up for suggestions on what to do with them. A couple were ruined, but I have plenty more.

The big silver guys are some OLD looking things, made by Nippon Chemi-Con. 3900uF, 20v. Encased in steel (kinda heavy). Any uses you guys can think of?

Big blues are snap-ins, made by Cornell. 2700uF, 100v. Also steel.

The rest is pretty normal, lots of useful and not-so-useful caps (some would go better in Tesla applications than audio. Hmm...). Oh, see that sea of red inside the box?



I looked at that, knowing I was going to have to sort it. Mostly red ceramics, kinda big ones. All printed values right on the caps. Some tantalums, lots of little flat mylars.

So, was it worth it? You be the judge.

Note: I ordered this a few months ago, just now putting pictures up. If anyone is interested, I did get a small surprise box, too, and will put up results with pictures if anyone wants me to.

[taj]

Yah know what? You're gonna spends hundreds of dollars on this hobby in much worse ways. You'll be using these babies for years -- for everything. It's a good deal, especially if you're starting from scratch. At the beginning, be a packrat. You can get picky after 10-15 years. :-)

BTW: Those 3.3uF film caps work wonders as DC blocking caps (coupling caps) for amplifier inputs. You will need/use them a lot.

The most useful values for solid state amplifiers (decoupling caps) is 100nF (0.1uF), 100-250v polypropylene. Buy them by the hundreds.

Cheers,

..Todd

[indianajo]

3 uf @ 200 WVAC is a Hammond later model western hemisphere motor starter capacitor, film or electrolytic. 2600 uf @ 100 WV is an output cap for a 50W per channel quasi-complementary power amp that can't dump DC into the speaker. (ST100 anybody?) 3900 uf @ 20 is useful for turning a 12VDC 6A car battery charger into a semi quiet 18 VDC power supply. I'm running my phase shift sine wave oscillator (GE Transistor manual, 7th ed) off one of these. Use it to test stereo balance in power and preamps.
The big question is, are the markings correct? On the Radio Shack capacitor grab bags I bought in the 60's, the phase shift oscillator project says: mostly no.

[llamaboy]

taj-
So far, this box has gotten me far. I'm really considering ordering another, but I'm torn between the Goldmine's and Jameco's grab bags. I love surprises.
I've been looking at schematics while bored at work, and I've seen those pop up on other people's projects. Glad to see that I got a few more, as is shown below with Box 2.
For the polypropylene: Any specific suggestions?

indianajo-
Wow, you just blew my little 22-year-old greenhorn mind. Now I know how people at work feel when I start rattling off about computers and why they shouldn't buy garbage Hewlett-Packards from the BX. So far, with the ones out of that box I've used, they've been right. I haven't tried any of the obviously ancient ones yet, but I will soon enough. =D

I got a second surprise box, also from the Goldmine. Small Surprise Box, $5. I'm not sure, but I think they might pack them going by your order history, because they pretty much read my mind on what I was hoping for. Sort of.



Tall and orange. I love orange. And I love 330 uF @ 35v. Too tall for pocket amps, maybe, but I'm still happy with them. I'll...uhh...use them for something. Don't know yet.
NOTE: The first surprise box I got had TONS AND TONS OF FUSES. Now I have about nine-million fuses. Here, I only got a few, and some are at least different looking.
Two decent sized transformers. Good excuse to make Tangent's smart dummy load.
Lots of white phono jacks that appear to not be very old. The red ones are extremely old, and smaller, and there are a few more that appear to be taken from a Pioneer LaserDisc player. (I started this hobby by taking apart a dead LaserDisc player and got a lot of good salvage, most of which I still have.)
A nice, but painful, push-button switch. I like it, it's heavy. Just missing panel-mount nut and washer.
Other than that, some nice knobs, other random caps, more Aerovox films, random LEDs, a black thing that kind of looks like a resistor, a red thing that also looks like a big resistor, and a couple of resistors; two Vishays and an old carbon-composite.

Pretty good for $5. Anyone have any experience with the aforementioned Jameco grab bags?

QUESTION! These thing have been bothering me for awhile, so I have to ask: What exactly are these, and should I buy more? .22 LR round and an old CF card for size comparison.





All I know is the obvious, and it is encased in something waxy that feels like it was sticky maybe forty years ago. Under this sticky casing is probably steel, it has more weight than others it's size. The emblem looks like the one on my ERO caps, but says RDE instead.
Thanks for everything, everyone!

[Conrad Hoffman]

The fact is we breadboard and prototype with parts we have, so it's good to have a large and varied assortment of stuff to play with. I think you got a nice deal, but watch out for those 1000uF/6V caps. Reliability on high uF low voltage electrolytics is terrible. In almost any test equipment I've repaired, those are the ones that fail first. A slightly larger 1000uF/25V cap will measure better to begin with and last years longer. I never pass up fuses when I can get them cheap/surplus. Fuses are expensive and when you need one, you need one right now. I didn't see the photo, but if you've got bright red disk caps, make sure they aren't MOV over voltage protection devices. IMO, now you should buy or build a capacitance bridge so you can see how good or bad some of this stuff really is. Plans on my web site.

Conrad