Hiya,
In a lot of build pictures I see people using what I can only describe as a shiny cermic blob type capacitor,my question is can a normal ceramic disk type capacitor be used instead?
tia
Paul
Could be tantalums? They look like ceramic blobs… and they are probably not great to use. They are mostly 1 uF and higher, so you won’t find many ceramic caps of those values, although, I got some for 2.2 uF…
Use electrolytic instead.
The answer to that is it depends!
Electrolytics are, in a very anoraky way, poor capacitors, sometimes these qualities are good things. Tantalums are “better” but are more expensive. Both are available in larger sizes.
In general though, if a circuit needed a cap of say, 100nF, pretty much any 100nF capacitor can be used.
Regards
S
Thanks for the answers guys but I don’t think I explained clearly enough,I was comparing ceramic disk http://www.rapidonline.com/sku/Electronic-Components/Capacitors/Ceramic/Ceramic-disc-capacitors/62494/08-0050
to multilayer ceramics http://www.rapidonline.com/Electronic-Components/Capacitors/Ceramic/Radial-multilayer-ceramic-capacitors/62498
The reason I ask is that most of the online stores I use for bits and pieces don’t stock the multilayer type whereas the ceramic disk type are readily available.
cheers
Paul
Multilayers and discs will substitute for each other just fine. Don’t forget to watch your lead spacing - discs are usually bigger.
When I use discs I try to use the coated ones. You don’t have to, but the uncoated ceramic discs are a bit fragile.
Thanks Nebula,
When you say the uncoated ceramics are a bit fragile do you mean in the physical sense,as in ‘they break easily’ or do you mean electronically as in ‘they don’t suffer over voltage etc?’
cheers
Paul