Panasonic Power supply repair

Electrolytic are usually +/- 20% on value and usually the design is not that critical on the value. I would just go to 82uF or 100uF @35V or 50V assuming it physically fits on your printed circuit board.

I would recommend that you buy capacitors with a 105C temperature rating and capacitor designated as low ESR / low Z / low impedance.

Another electronic supplier is Rapid Electronics

Eh? Every man and his dog sells those (mouser, RS, Farnell, Electrokit) unless you're looking for a weird size?

Do you want to grab this one - marked as last one available.

Thank you. Have found that RS (Who I had forgotten about) can supply the exact match for all required values

One thing worth checking whilst you've got the box open is to check the power supply heatsinks.

Quite a few years ago I had a Panasonic DMR-E55 DVD recorder fail because the power supply regulator chip had died due to overheating. It had a thin piece of metal as a heatsink. When I replaced the chip I put a more substantial heatsink on it. That ran a lot cooler. Capacitors don't like being overheated, so when you replace the failed capacitors see if there are any heatsinks near them.

In general for PSUS the 'next size up I can source' is fine.

My previous TV, a Samsung 40(ish) inch flat panel, started getting intermittent on powering on. On taking the back off it was easy to see that two electrolytic capacitors in the power supply had failed. Both were in physical contact with a large heatsink fitted to the switching chip.

Needless to say I left the leads on the replacement capacitors long, sleeved them and positioned the body of the capacitor as far away from the heatsink that I could manage.

RS Components is similar to Farnell, the ranges overlap quite a lot but are not identical, Rapid is much smaller and has a more limited range.

Worth looking at DigiKey and Mouser, large international suppliers who will sell to anyone.

Some parts, even from big names like Panasonic, are pretty much only sold in the Far East, and may even be manufactured to order for a particular product. I've had trouble getting odd capacitor values where space is extremely limited. Electrolytics are often stocked in only 1,

Note the temperature spec on the capacitor and don't buy anything lower. Life seems to vary according to temperature spec and ambient with a Bolzmann law i.e. a 2000 hour 125 degree capacitor might only last 1000 hours at 135 degrees ambient.

You need to be very wary of buying components from Ebay. You might save a few quid but you'd be taking a chance on something possibly fake or sub-standard.

I would never use Farnell or Mouser again. I'm currently with RS; they've been okay so far.

Sometimes I wonder why domestic electronic equipment works for as long as it does!

I've had good experiences with ebay. Dire experiences with Ali Express discrete semiconductors

But for passives AliExpress is fine really.

The good thing about Ebay is it tends to be a 'retired bloke in a shed selling off stuff, making pin money'

So £30 handling frees are not featured.

The handling fees screw you up.

Ebay is my place of choice for small components

I don't know what style you need, but there's likely to be a wider choice if you can parallel two 33uF capacitors.

digikey or Mouser and look up the Panasonic FM and FC series of caps

It's worth checking the feedback and their other listings. If they have

Theo

I have had mostly good experiences of ebay too. However I have never bought anything described as "from China".

I did have one interesting experience. I bought a used laptop described as "working but needs a new battery". It worked to the extent that it booted OK. But when I got to the place where I would input from the keyboard, I found that the fields automatically filled with the / character. I started Notebook using just the mouse and watched as it just continuously added / characters to it with any other key I tried producing the correct character between the stream of / characters. I powered it off and reported it as "Not as described" adding that it was advertised as working and was unusable. I got a return label and an ebay promise to refund my purchase price on delivery, and I sent it back tracked.

It made its way back to the seller where it couldn't be delivered ("No answer"), and it failed the re-delivery attempt also, and was put on the "To be collected" list. On that basis I went back to ebay and explained this to an ebay agent who accepted it had got back the the sender and he refunded my payment.

About a month later I received my parcel back with a sticker "Not called for. Return to sender" on it. I now had my money back and a dud laptop. By then I had worked out that if the other keys worked but the / character was permanently stuck, then perhaps a replacement keyboard might fix it. I ordered one (from ebay, claimed to be new) and took the laptop apart to fit the new keyboard, and after I put it back together and refitted the battery I powered it from the mains and tested the keyboard by entering into Notepad and all the keys worked. I also noticed that whereas originally when I powered it from the mains it showed no battery, now it had found the battery and was charging it. Obviously it had suffered from dirty contacts and by taking the battery out and putting it back I had cleaned them. At 80% charged I switched off the mains power and it ran happily on the battery. I now had a fully working laptop with change out of £15. :-)

Looking back through my purchase history, the only other dud I had to send back was a CCTV camera which worked for a few days then died. I connected another camera to the wiring and that worked OK so it had to be a dud camera. I got that money back without problems. That was a year and a half ago. Two failures out of several hundred purchases isn't a bad average.

Not electronics but a part for my classic car ... It was available by mail order for a price plus postage and packing from a store with a Bristol address. I looked on ebay and the same business was advertising the same part there. It was the same price as the business catalogue only this time it was postage and packing included. So I ordered it from ebay instead of from their online catalogue and saved the postage and packing cost.