Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

[Behemot]

After disposal of some older electronics of all kinds for parts, I have run into several capacitors which I would like to make some order in.

1. If I am not mistaken, the korean Samsung capacitor has become Samwha which makes craps mostly these days. Maybe some good lines but who the hell knows so hands away. But older caps with Samsung logo should be still fine (like not crap)?

2. Sam Young used to make caps for Chemi-Con, still makes? Caps with Chemi-Con logo with SAMYOUNG inside, good or bad? I know for Sam Young, it's probably the same as Samwha: crap mostly these days.

3. Chemi-con logo with dot inside: is that Sam Young (PCBONEZ said they stole the logo for a while), or United Chemi-Con (I had such in my own hands)?

4. Korean Chemi-Con: what is its relationship with Nippon Chemi-Con, is part of group now or somebody acquired it?

Chemi-Con says this in company history:

1972 Sep. SAMYOUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. is established as a joint venture, in South Korea

According to SY web, they were established in 1968 and established venture with NCC in 1972.

2003 Nov. Establishment of CHEMI-CON KOREA CORP.(Currently CHEMI-CON ELECTRONICS (KOREA) CO., LTD.) in South Korea.

I hold a KOREA CHEMI-CON SMH capacitor in my hand which definitelly is older than 2003 (but has no date codeat all to say precisely).

[ratdude747]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

Moved out of FAQ, since the first post is more of a question than an answer... FAQ is for guides and the like.

[ben7]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

Nippon means "Japan"

United Chemi-Con is, I believe, a subsidiary of Nippon Chemi-Con, but it is based in the US. UCC mainly makes snap-in and screw terminal capacitors.

I think the shield with the dot is Korea Chemi-Con.

[Heihachi_73]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

I thought Korea Chemi-Con and Sam Young were the one and same, with the Korea Chemi-con logo mainly being on older components (pre-2000 or so)... They look too similar, even the series codes seem to match (e.g. my HP Pavilion 8800 has Korea Chemi-Con LXV and SMS series caps, but my HP 500a has all Sam Young LXV and SMS, with the exception of a single Korea Chemi-Con SMS cap). Both boards also have a few Daewoo caps which are quite different.

[Behemot]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

So the question is, are they good, or are they crap?

And how does that come together with UCC marked caps with the smaller ones having dots in the same device (as it would be strange to have the bigger caps from UCC and smaller ones from KCC so I believe they were the same)?

[larrymoencurly]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

Most of the 1,000uF, 6.3V Sam Youngs on my EVGA brand video cards swelled up, but none of the Panasonics did.

[Clutchbox]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

On my Auzentech Forte (v1.0) soundcard were some SamYoung caps for the power-circuit, they only lasted 2,5 years (then you get that famous tudtudtudtudtud-machinegun-sound). The caps were Sam Young 85c 2kHr General Purpose (SHL-series) and the 100uF 25V caps were a little too high on ESR for the particulair circuit (0,66 Ohm ESR) otherwise they measured OK with the Peak Atlas ESR tester.
I replaced them with 3 Panasonic FC 100uF 25V caps & 2 Panasonic FR 470uF 16V caps and now the Forte is again alive&kickin in my PC. Slightly better sounding also, nothing to complain.

Auzentech soundcards are made in Korea, thus that's why they use the Korean Sam Young caps. And no, not good quality in endurance, as I expected.
But if you replace the power-circuit caps for decent Japanese caps (Panny's or even Nichicon KA Audio caps if you wish) you will be fine.

[Behemot]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

Yeah I know SY is PoS now, changed quite a few in displays. Was more asking about Korea Chemi-Con; it should be from the time they made caps for Nippon Chemi-Con, that's giving me some hope.

I just checked the http://capacitor.web.fc2.com/ list and it seems like Samsung has nothing in common with Samwha. Or at most, my idea is they may have sold the division to Samwha as they do SMD ceramics only now.

[Clutchbox]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

OK. If you see this recent video: EEVblog #511 - Rigol DP832 Power Supply Teardown
At first (6:35) I thought "Nice of you Rigol, for using real Nippon Chemi-Con in your new nice-priced PowerSupply."
But soon (12:23) I discovered that it was a sort of Korean Chemi-Con look-alike, SamYoung KMG series.
They (Korean Chemi-Con plant) still sort of make (Nippon's) Chemi-Con's today, but label them as SamYoung it seems.
And yes, spec-wise they are the same capacitor as Nippon/United Chemi-Con KMG series.

The question is still, are they as good as Nippon? They have the same 'formula' but it is a different Factory/Plant where they are made...


Here in Europe we have bulkpacks of Europe Chemi-Con.

[Behemot]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

What exactly do you mean? The first Korea Chemi-Con was Sam Young stealing the logo by the time they made caps for NCC. But later, true KCN was established as part of the Chemi-Con group. So you mean NCC now makes caps for SY?

The question is, are they gonna hold?

[mariushm]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

As far as I remember, Nippon Chemi Con made some partnerships with Samyoung around the 70-80's and shared with them the formulas for some series of capacitors, or considered some of Samyoung's capacitors good enough to have the same series code as NCC ones.
See : http://www.samyoung.co.kr/eng/company/history.asp click the 1970 and 1980.

After some time, I think NCC got pissed because Samyoung put that logo that looks like the NCC logo but with a dot in the center on the capacitors, something NCC never agreed to, or something like that... I don't know, maybe they considered it too similar to their brand.

There were also some capacitors with the NCC logo but with the text KOREA CHEMI-CON written inside

Anyways... Nippon Chemi Con still has the Samyoung AND Korean Chemi Con listed on their contact pages, so they probably still have some partnership, or maybe the group (NCC) still has investments in Samyoung :

http://www.chemi-con.co.jp/e/toiawase/overseas.html

You can see more details about Samyoung and varieties if you put these in google translate :

http://capacitor.web.fc2.com/s.html#samyoung
http://capacitor.web.fc2.com/k.html#koreachemicon

Anyways, I don't consider them as good as NCC capacitors, not even close. I'd put them... let's say under Teapo... and Teapo I personally consider just under the top Japanese capacitors (I know some people here consider Teapo junk).

[Clutchbox]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

What exactly do you mean? The first Korea Chemi-Con was Sam Young stealing the logo by the time they made caps for NCC. But later, true KCN was established as part of the Chemi-Con group. So you mean NCC now makes caps for SY?

Yes, today you can say that UCC makes SamYoung-brand at their Korean SamYoung/Chemi-Con plant (including the Nippon-series lookalikes).
Question is, do they today make UCC/'Nippon' branded caps in Korea?
It wouldn't suprise me at all if they do that, if there is a demand.

The question is, are they gonna hold?

That's the real question.
The formula is the same, but the manufacturing could be subtle different between the ChemiCon plants in different country's.
But I would not buy SamYoung-brand caps, or the original UCC/Nippon-caps at my supplier if the "Country of Origin" is Korea.

[Behemot]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

I got various such caps from old CRT display here (still in the board) and probably will find more, there is plenty of bad CRT displays here which I will probably tear to single components Well, if that's so suspicious, I will keep just the 400V caps which measure good and ditch the rest…

[Behemot]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

I recently discovered NCC has share in Sam Young, this they say on their website:

SAMYOUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
Main Office :

47, Sagimakgol-ro, Jungwon-gu, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea
TEL: +82-31-743-6701 FAX: +82-31-741-3077
QINGDAO SAMYOUNG ELECTRONICS CO.,LTD.

No5. Changjiang Road, Pingdu City, Shandong Province, China
TEL: +86-532-88382040 FAX: +86-532-88382042
Main Bussiness: Manufacturing and selling of aluminum electrolytic capacitors
Percentage Owned by Nippon Chemi-Con: 33.40%

[Wester547]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

If you look at Samwha's history:

http://www.samwha.com/sub1_2.html

Nov. 1974 Renames Samwha Nichicon to Samwha Electric Co., Ltd.

Samwha is or was actually Nichicon's Korean subsidiary. Nichicon's history on their site confirms the same:

http://www.nichicon.co.jp/english/co...m_history.html

1973 DEC. Established a joint venture company called SAMWHA ELECTRIC CO., LTD in Korea for producing aluminum electrolytic capacitors and plastic film capacitors.

So, Samwha, a Korean company at least somewhat owned by Nichicon, produces capacitors for Samsung (at least since 2005, according to their history), is what I can surmise from this thread. However, it doesn't end there (seemingly). Look at GSC's history:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080629...%20history.htm

Though it is not easy to read in Chinese (but this was the only link I could find and I don't know how to read Chinese myself), it's easy enough to see that GSC holds claim to having built capacitors for Samwha since 2003 and Samyoung since 2004 (and for producing polymers for Lelon.... ouch)... dunno if it's really true but it would explain their high failure rate....

[Behemot]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

Interesting. So it explains why older Samwha caps were better (but still failing after many years) and now suck because Nichicon does not pump them with knowledge anymore.

Any idea what the originally branded "Samsung" caps actually were?

[stone21]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

Currently "Samsung E-capacitor" is not manufactured anymore. "Samsung E- capacitor" was produced in "Samsung electro-mechanics" ,however they had done that business several years ago. Samwha did buy SEMCO's equipments, but doesn't make Samsung brand capacitor now. As long as you still have Samsung capacitor, it's quite long time ago produced.

[Behemot]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

And that division was acquired by Samwha, yes? So than they may have started their own production, if GSC was making caps for them before.

[larrymoencurly]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

So the question is, are they good, or are they crap?

3 out of 4 Sam Young 1500uF, 6.3V NXC capacitors on an Nvidia 6200 video card failed on me, about 5 years ago. Their date codes may be "79 E(1)" (2007?). The same type of capacitors, maybe in 1000uF size, failed on an older video card.

[Wester547]

Re: Samsung, Sam Young, Korea, United and Nippon Chemi-Con: who is who?

3 out of 4 Sam Young 1500uF, 6.3V NXC capacitors on an Nvidia 6200 video card failed on me, about 5 years ago. Their date codes may be "79 E(1)" (2007?). The same type of capacitors, maybe in 1000uF size, failed on an older video card.

"79 E(1)" would be September 5th of 2007, factory "1", with accordance to UCC's date coding system. What's interesting is that NXC is a direct cross to NCC's KZG series (down to the 2,000 hours @ 105*C load life). Very interesting to see that both series are probably equally failure prone. I have always wondered if Samyoung are the ones that actually manufacture the KZG series of capacitors (as well as KZJ and everything equal and lower in terms of ESR - NCC could contract Samyoung to manufacture their ultra low ESR lytics the same way TK contracts OST to) though I have nothing to substantiate that school of thought, but it would certainly explain why they are so unreliable. If you look at NCC's catalogue, Samyoung's Korea factory (as well as their factory of China, Qingdao) is listed as a factory that some of their series of capacitors are manufactured in ("available items by manufacturing locations").

That might not be true either as KZGs seem to fail no matter what factory the sleeve says they stem from (KZEs and KYs for an example have come from the same factories according to their sleeves, but those series have a very low failure rate). But, if you look at UCC's KZG datasheet, check this quote out:

These capacitors are different from the standard low impedance capacitors, as they use a new low resistivity electrolyte. Compared to our KZE series that also uses this advanced electrolyte technology, the KZG series has lower ESR/impedance ratings, making them ideal for use in computer circuit boards where very low ESR capacitors are required.

Yes, according to that, KZG and KZE use the same electrolyte. KZE's UCC datasheet also confirms that and KY's UCC datasheet also makes of note that KY uses the same "innovative" "low resistivity electrolyte" as KZG, KZJ, and KZE do, but once again, KY and KZE have nowhere near the failure rate (though Nippon's datasheets do not mention any series to use that electrolyte except KZG and KZJ so I think it might have been a mistranslation on UCC's part but I don't know for certain). KZH's UCC datasheet on the other hand specifies that it uses different electrolyte from the rest, a "unique water base" electrolyte.

So, to conclude, I think either it was an imprudent idea to use the same electrolyte for such a wide range of capacitors ESR wise (pushing that technology too far), combined with the increased water content necessary to lower the ESR, or maybe Samyoung do actually manufacture the NCC branded capacitors of that grade. I guess we'll never know for sure and it might not matter now that polymers are taking over.