Folks in the halogenated solvent business could tell when a batch of
electrolytic caps with out-of-spec crimps hit the market by the number of panic calls
regarding the big scary cap company Alert! notice issued by the offending
company. (Evidentally, issuing the Alert! notice was cheaper than fixing the
crimping process.)
Japanese cap companies saw this Alert! as an admission of process control
failure by the US cap companies, realized their end crimp process was under
control with minimal variance, advertized their caps widely under the banner of
'Freedom to Use Freon(TM)' and took huge market share chunks away from their
competition!

One well known US auto maker was so paniced by the Alert that they went to
using saponifier to remove rosin flux residues to 'save' the 4 cents per PWA
that applying corrective epoxy end seals (to compensate for the crimp problems)
to the four electrolytic caps on each PWA would cost. A later in-house full
cost analysis using the companies own accounting procedures by company personnel
showed that their in-line water cleaners using saponification cost them USD
190 per shift, where an in-line CFC cleaner running right next to the saponifier
cleaner & cleaning the same PWAs from the same soldering lines cost only USD
39 per shift.... (with the permission of the company these data plus a pix of
the engineer in charge were published in one of the major elec mags as an
advert. with a header of 'save USD 150 per shift')
[Would also note that water contaminated with water soluble cleaning agents
such as saponifier could penetrate the poorly crimped end seal and cause elec
cap failure. Bottom line here is that contamination inside components is not
good for electrical performance!]

Bill Kenyon
Global Centre Consulting
P.O. Box 553, Montchanin, DE 19710 USA
Tel: 302.652.4272     Fax: 302.652.5701   Cell: 302.377.4272
email: [log in to unmask]

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