- 2025
- Mar
- 25
What’s inside one of those can capacitors?
Pretty much exactly what you’d expect. Nothing really exciting…
I decided to take the top off the capacitor removed from the Heathkit AF-1 that I’m working with, since it’s completely dead and as light as can be. There’s probably no wet electrolyte left in this thing at all.
My pipe cutter made short work of the aluminum can, and it separated into two pieces.
As expected, this thing was dry as a bone. It looks to have used some sort of tar or other dark potting material, which was also dry and hard.
The material itself was just paper and foil, wrapped with old tape. I assume that somewhere in there are dividers for for the different sections.
There’s not much else to be said about this device. I’m going to pull the old material out and keep the base for other things, but the device itself gets replaced on the AF-1’s chassis.
Stay tuned for the power supply rebuild.