Manufacturing Date of Electrolytic capacitor

[AleXis6]

Guys. could you help me please to decode some codes of main capacitor's producers.
I would like to know the manufacturing date.

Based on the information from capacitors I have - it seems easy to decode manufacturing date for Rubycon, Nichicon.

If I understood correctly:
1. Nichicons marks date of production as (see the attached pictures) H2116
I don't understand the meaning of first letter - may be it is code of factory.
21 -year
16 week
I bought this capacitor recently.


another one-



2. Rubycon - 3M2021,
I do not have idea for 3M
20 -Year
21- week
I bought this capacitor in the middle of 2021


3. Panasonic
I bought this capacitor recently from a wholesaller.
the code is 0612TN
I hope it was in 2020 June





4. I have no idea for Hitachi
I bought this capacitor recently from a wholesaller.



sinilar 15 years old capacitor HITACHI HP3 has code 53 A6
so maybe August 2020 for new one and March 2005 for old.
5. Nippon - is to difficult

even with this manual below it is not clear. 0 -is a Year - it might be 2000, 2010, 2020 ?
but it was in December :-)
I do not remember the date of purchace, so the optimistic mfg date - December 2020

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Manufacturing Date of Electrolytic capcitor

The AICtech caps, look like 1982, in American date format. We, over here, have been used to using WWYY instead of the internationally-known YYWW order.

[AleXis6]

Re: Manufacturing Date of Electrolytic capcitor

Somebosy at this forum advised me to buy capacitors from digikey.
It is very far from me but I did an order and now can not understand is Digikey sold me >8 yers old capacitors? or May be Nichicon changed the date coding?
these 2 series have codes B1339 and B1343.
It seems them from 2013 like from Aliexpress :-) several others Nichicons also not very fresh (2018, 2019), but all ordered Rubycon from 2021.

[AleXis6]

Re: Manufacturing Date of Electrolytic capcitor

Digikey answered:
For all of these parts, the last time we received stock for these parts was in 2013/2014 and the date codes for these parts would before that time that we received stock in for the parts.

so all my 5 different nominals capacitors for 160-200V has produced in 2012-2014 and sold by Digikey in January 2022!
and Nippon capacitors (1200 x 200V) were expensive (5$ per pcs)


This is crazy, same expiration date available at ebay or alibaba for half of Digikey price and with clear pictures of production date.
bad first experience for buying from Digikey USA with expensive shipment to Belarus.

please advice is it ok for direct distributor to sell such old 9-10 years capacitors?

[momaka]

Re: Manufacturing Date of Electrolytic capcitor

so all my 5 different nominals capacitors for 160-200V has produced in 2012-2014 and sold by Digikey in January 2022!
and Nippon capacitors (1200 x 200V) were expensive (5$ per pcs)
...
This is crazy, same expiration date available at ebay or alibaba for half of Digikey price and with clear pictures of production date.
bad first experience for buying from Digikey USA with expensive shipment to Belarus.

Yeah, Digikey are indeed quite expensive.
But they do stock a lot of different parts and you get a guarantee that the parts will be legit and not counterfeit. So it does still make sense to buy some parts from them. But for electrolytic caps - I'd say, it depends... see below.

Digikey answered:
For all of these parts, the last time we received stock for these parts was in 2013/2014 and the date codes for these parts would before that time that we received stock in for the parts.

Sounds about right. I've noticed more than once now that indeed Digikey's general purpose (85C) caps are likely sitting on the shelves and not selling too well, mainly because they often cost more than newer low-ESR caps with better specs, such as Rubycon YXJ, for example. Therefore people buy those and not the GP caps. So the GP caps sit unsold, and the better (and often cheaper) caps sell well.
Would be nice if Digikey started offering discounts on their old stock to get it moving.

please advice is it ok for direct distributor to sell such old 9-10 years capacitors?

Well, I wouldn't say that it's "OK" - not at the prices that they are charging for some of these parts, like you noted. But if we have to be realistic, those caps should still be perfectly usable with plenty of life left on the clock (at least 10-15 years.)

I bought some Nichicon HM caps from Mouser back in 2012. They were pretty much new (late 2011 or early 2012 production date code.) I used up most of them, except for maybe one or two, as I eventually found other caps to use for their application. This year, I ran out of those "other" caps, so I pulled one of the last few of these Nichicon HM. They had sat stored in a box for nearly 10 years now at this point. I put one on my cap testers, and it showed perfect ESR and capacitance. Didn't even bother reforming it and just installed it in the device I was recapping. It worked without any issues. Of course, time will tell how long it lasts. It already has 10 years of its life gone, more or less (though it was stored properly, so any degradation should be minimal.) But I do expect it will last at least another 10 years... at which point the device I put it in (motherboard) should be obsolete without a doubt (actually, it already is.)

[AleXis6]

Re: Manufacturing Date of Electrolytic capcitor

it will last at least another 10 years..

thank you for the response.
I ordered SMG ,SMQ Nippon series based on their pdf dated 2020 as a replacement for more old series which now installed in my online UPS.
Since the PDF of 2020, I assumed that in 2020 at least these series were produced and where else to look for them as not a direct distributor.

If it were just an end device like a printer I wouldn't worry. but online ups runs 24/7 and supplies half the electronics in the house, besides these are high voltage capacitors, I don't even have a ready made 160 volt power supply to measure leakage current. capacitance is within -20% (about -15%), ESR is also within limits.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Manufacturing Date of Electrolytic capcitor

With the help of Topcat I bought a Schlumberger SP-17A high voltage power supply from eBay from a seller that would not ship to Sweden.
I bought new caps for it from Mouser as the originals are what, around 50 years old? lol!
But of course such capacitors for tube based gear (so very high voltage around 500v but low capacitance) is a low volume item for Mouser.
Some of them where quite recent, but a couple where several years old.
This is just completely normal for a low volume item like this in my opinion.
I did reform them in a bit crazy way: I used a three phase bridge rectifier hooked up to 400VAC I have available in my apartement (EU is great in this way!)
And then connected a couple high value resistors in series, then I just monitored the voltage and when I hit around 500V the caps where rated for I tripped the breaker...
Now that I actually have the Schlumberger working it will be allot less dangerous the next time I need to reform such a cap
Here is a thread on reforming caps, it talks mainly about low voltage stuff but just increase the resistance allot for high voltage stuff and it will be fine...

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=50530

[AleXis6]

Re: Manufacturing Date of Electrolytic capcitor

So finally Digikey confirmed, that sold capacitors (2012-2014 YYYY) are to old .

also I received some their internal mails:
"The parts are too old to be used in the application.
We can credit the customer on their findings and they can scrap the parts on site."
and one manager also surprised with the old stock:
"My concern is if the parts will still be covered under warranty or if they should be tagged out and due to usage should we even still carry these if we are not selling them by the time they need to be used by. Some of these parts are 12 years old. "

[Per Hansson]

Re: Manufacturing Date of Electrolytic capcitor

Thanks for posting back, yes I can understand Digikey.
At the same time I really do feel like what I wrote in my previous post:
Because it is a shame if we can't even source odd/uncommon value caps because they throw them away after a year instead...
Maybe an idea could be they tell us upfront they are old stock, need to be reformed and offer them with a discount?
But that might involve too much inventory/paper work of course...

[momaka]

Re: Manufacturing Date of Electrolytic capcitor

So finally Digikey confirmed, that sold capacitors (2012-2014 YYYY) are to old .

also I received some their internal mails:
"The parts are too old to be used in the application.
We can credit the customer on their findings and they can scrap the parts on site."
and one manager also surprised with the old stock:
"My concern is if the parts will still be covered under warranty or if they should be tagged out and due to usage should we even still carry these if we are not selling them by the time they need to be used by. Some of these parts are 12 years old. "

That's sad.
I'd email Digikey back and point them to the suggestions/comments in this thread. Like Per said, it would be a shame if they scrap those parts, because indeed there aren't many places to get good genuine uncommon value caps.

Yes 12 years is quite old... but I will trust a 12 YO Japanese cap any day over a new Chinese/Taiwanese no-name crap. In general purpose / low stress applications, especially, those old Japanese caps will still probably not have any issues to last another 15-20 years. I have plenty of electronics from the 80's and 90's that still function fine today. Sure the caps in some of these are probably getting due for a change... but 30-40 years of useful life is absolutely respectable in my book.

So Digikey really just needs to mark down the prices when some of their parts get a little too old, so hopefully they can get them sold a little faster. After all, this is a common grocery store practice and why different days of the week, different things are on "sale" - the store just wants to move the stuff that might be getting closer to their expiry date so that they don't have any (or as much) of it go to waste.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Manufacturing Date of Electrolytic capcitor

My vintage audio gear made in 1980, 1982 and 1985 with most of the original caps still reading ok in esr, C and leakage current are the proof that good caps can last for decades.