Protecting big caps with... silicone?

[Chuck H]

Ah !!, and I still make my arrow points in silex, tied with real cat gut, and glued with boiled fish hide, but that belongs into another forum []

Yeah, but if you ever try scraping fish hide with a clovis point you know what a pain it is.

The stuff I ended up buying was silicon to be used as gasket in car-engines. Works like a charm! Stays rubbery and takes the heat, over 300 C.

In case you missed the above post... Many automotive silicone products are fortified with metals or carbon and can be conductive even after they're cured. Adequate heat resistance is a property silicone already has, it's not exclusive to automotive product varieties. The stuff you bought should be fine as long as you only use it for electrolytic caps (which are large enough) and never allow any of it to be in contact with bare leads, eyelets, etc. Pretty much any contact with voltage on it.

Chuck

[überfuzz]

Chuck - I missed your post. However I'm way to cagey to go all wild with my (gasket) silicon. Anyway, thanx for the advice. I wont slob around with it near conductive parts, like solder, bare wire etc.

[mort]

When it's necessary to pad/seal, what about using appropriately sized pieces of spongy foam and placing them under the caps. This of course would be much easier to do as you're initially installing them. Just apply pressure to to the cap(s) in order to squeeze the foam a bit and solder in. Or would this not be enough 'fixation' to do the trick?

This just occurred to me, I don't know if it's a good idea or not...

[Chuck H]

I might not do it that way. I would think that any foam (sponge, polymer, whatever) might fatigue with time and either deteriorate inside the chassis or at least fail to stabilize the caps. Also, you would be relying on the solder joints and component lead contact points as the pressure points. That just sounds like a bad idea in any device that vibrates. Especially if it's on a PCB.

[mort]

Ah, good points.