Appreciation post for the guy who caught my damaged capacitor before I shipped a board back

I was about to return a power supply board to a customer in Chicago last month, thought it was totally dead. Then a guy from the repair forum pointed out a tiny hairline crack in the electrolytic capacitor that I missed completely. He said it's more common than people think, like 1 in 20 boards with similar symptoms are from cracked caps not dead chips. I checked his stat against some old repair logs and it matched up close enough to scare me. Now I inspect every cap with a magnifier before I even test anything else. Has anyone else found a hidden crack like that after you ruled out everything else?

2 comments

2 Comments

keithbennett1mo ago

Nah, that's just confirmation bias. You got lucky once.

joel_young1mo ago

Lucky or not, @keithbennett, sometimes a single good call just pays off more than ten safe bets.