Found Silver & Tantalum

A little update on my tantalum capacitor education and to make some cash at the same time. Iv'e been going through my boxes of circuit boards one thing I'm realizing is that I know a lot more now than I did when I started this "scrap" thing, over four years ago now. I'm finding a lot of tantalum capacitors that I just passed on when I wasn't even thinking about nothing but "gold fever". I first started this thread having no tantalum capacitor "bucket" and there is still no bucket for them, with tantalum capacitors you have to think small. Grams turn to ounces, ounces to pounds and pounds to dollars (hopefully).

With the axial lead "type" tantalum capacitors there's basically two groups, solid and wet electrolytes types. With each of these there are several series of further classifications and about a half dozen companies that make them. I have found more of the solid type than the wet type. I have only found 3/4 of a pound of the wet ones, but they have the silver case and worth the most. Have over three pounds of the solid type though. The 150D made by Sprague (now Vishay) is by far the type I have found the most of. Probably because the circuit boards I'm looking at were made between 1974 and 1989. The 150D is easy to spot as there is a nipple on the anode (+) side of the capacitor. This nipple is located in the center, where the lead exits the can, it's actually the weld spot where the tantalum wire exits the can and is welded to a nickel wire that forms the "nipple". With these types the case (can) is very magnetic as are both lead wires as they are made out of nickel. There are other Sprague capacitors that are in this same series, these will be marked M39003 or CS13B, both are military specification versions of the 150D. Sprague also marks their capacitors with a 2 inside a circle. There is also three other companies that I have found that are made to the same specifications or very similar. All have the same nipple at the anode, made with a tantalum case, nickel leads and same case sizes. These are the KEMET series T110, Cornell Dublier TAS series and Siemens CS13B. Hope this helps some of you that are looking for the tantalum capacitors. I'll post some pictures later of the different ones.

This board had three axial through hole hermetically sealed tantalum capacitors (TC's thank you olddude). The TC's on this board were made by Sprague and are the 150D series TC's and had date codes 7939 (39th week 1979). These capacitors have a solid tantalum electrolyte and have tinned nickel leads. So both anode (+) and cathode (-) leads will be magnetic. The 150D anode side of the case is also very magnetic, with no magnetic pull on the cathode side of the case. The 150D has four case code sizes (A, B, R, S), will have a case diameter 0.135 to 0.351 inches with the A-case being the smallest size and the S-case largest. Lengths vary from 0.286 to 0.785 inches, these are fairly large considering most tantalum capacitors are much smaller. This board had three R-case code capacitors, that weighed 2.7 to 2.9 grams each. Sprague's military equivalent of the 150D is the M39003 in the CSR13 style. On this board and other PCB's I have found Sprague TC's marked 150D, M39003 and CSR13.

Far as I can determine you will find these metal axial TC's on industrial, aerospace and military boards. This particular board with all the gold plating is defiantly not on any consumer electronics.

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This board had forty-two TC's, this is a big board measures 12 x 17 inches and I had eleven of them, that's 462 TC's in less than 30 minutes. At $.05 a gram that's a much better pay, yesterday a yard tried to pay me less than $20 for 3,000 pounds of steel!

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I'm going to need a bucket or a buyer soon!

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I don't know if anyone sees little blue object in my last picture. That would be one epoxy dipped TC, so for difference in size maybe some perspective. Size does matter!

money!

Grams to Pounds & Pennies to Dollars

This is only some of what I have pulled from circuit boards in last three weeks. Obviously the coins didn't come from a circuit board, they were scrap finds. The coins did come from the only piano I scrapped out earlier this year, it was 100+ years old. I scrapped it for the wood, the coins were pleasant surprise, I knew it was a good day when the first coin was WWII war nickel.

The majority of what I removed was not soldered, but "pulled" DIP's & Ag plated transistors. I really like the Texas Instruments red LED's, with Ag plated pins. The Burr - Brown A/D Converters are nice too, I already had a dozen or more, will add a few more to gold bucket.

All of that is bonus stuff, this thread is about tantalum capacitors. These were either cut or genitally pulled from boards ranging from low grade to very high grade. There was no noticeable devaluation of boards, I will in full disclosure notify my buyer what was pulled from any board I sell. With the boards I removed tantalum capacitors from, the most weight was just a little over a ounce. With the SMD's and epoxy coated dipped capacitors (gum drops) the weights averaged from 1 to 3 grams. The high grade boards with tantalum capacitors removed will still have lots of gold plated fingers, pins, sockets and the usual good PCB STUFF.

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Going back to hunting for silver, gold, tantalum and old copper is nice too!

This thread should be made into a sticky!!!! Good work Burt and thanks for the education.

I like your pictures. Kinda artsy.
Love finding these treasures!

This is a new one for me, I think it's a prototype as there is a hand written sticker that say's 55 of 227. It has six Siemens CS13B tantalum capacitors, I'm going to leave them on for now. I have already removed six gold plated transistors and five gold plated IC's, going to put them back in. I want to keep this board as is until I learn more about it. It was made in 1979 and they don't make them like this any more.

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I need to make a correction, the large capacitor in this picture (below & right of red led) is not a tantalum capacitor. This is the largest capacitor in the picture, it has a crimped case on the anode side and has a red epoxy seal at the anode as well. The confusion on my part was the + signs all over the capacitor, the epoxy sealed anode, removed from a high end telecom board and the crimped case at the anode. What made me look into more today was it was the only type of this style I have found, it was much larger than any other (too good to be true) and most important non-magnetic. It is a Sprague 630D Aluminium electrolytic capacitor. Sorry for any confusion this may lead to and I will try to do better.

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You did better as you found your own mistake and corrected it. Good job on expanding our knowledge.

I'm going to post some pictures of some capacitors that are not tantalum Capacitors. I have tried to be accurate, but a couple have "fooled" me with + signs both on the board and the capacitor.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BRASSCATCHER

This thread should be made into a sticky!!!! Good work Burt and thanks for the education.

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I second that!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bigburtchino

I'm going to post some pictures of some capacitors that are not tantalum Capacitors. I have tried to be accurate, but a couple have "fooled" me with + singes both on the board and the capacitor.

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Yep I've gotten fooled a lot. Not so much now, since you started this thread! Thanks big Burt.

ok guys I had a cool finding last night that I could not wait to pass on. In the elusive search fo Ta we know that the occasional "drop" could be on several things and the most valuable (wet & silver) are typically on telecom gear. Now I found a good ammount of the yellow bricks in car steros. Now these are the kind with the screen that flips out like a 7" monitor. I forgot my phone today but will be back tomorrow with more information. I just landed a solid contact with a stero repair/installation shop and all the junk is headed my way. He used to take them to the yard for shread price and when I said I would give him 2x that he was happy. 2 35 gallon trash cans cost me 7 bucks (had 7 on me and he said great). More info and pics soon. To me this was just one of those scrapping gems

I just want to say thanks and re-energize this thread. There is a ton of great info here. Hope to be on the lookout for these soon myself.

I plan to keep adding to this thread as I find useful and good information on the subject of Tantalum Capacitors. I thank all of you that have acknowledged and recognized this information as helpful. I want to recognize all the members of SMF, the Admin. (helper, one I think), and especially the moderators, you all have helped me learn and grow so it is I who thanks you! Many have came and contributed to this forum before me, unselfishly sharing with all their hard earned lessons. I hope this forum continues to be the great resource that it has certainly been for me. What this forum has done best, is demonstrate people care and want to help each other, that is a really good thing!

I think Eric deserves my thanks the most, it was he who provided me through this forum, THE OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN! Others have as well, so I started looking into the mysterious and hard to spot tantalum capacitor. Thank you Eric for sharing your knowledge on this subject, you do this I know with little self gain. For me it has rekindled my interest in electronics, something I started way back in the mid 70's, going to school for, working in the aviation industry for well over twenty years. My career in electronics was very good to me, allowed me to retire from one industry. Buy my own company, completely non-electronics related, that path another twenty years later led me to my newest endeavor, becoming "A SCRAPPER".

I will as much as possible keep adding to this thread, encourage all to do so as well. If we all continue to help each other, we will learn, grow, and add to a very needed task, being " A SCRAPPER".

Going to add some pictures of a new type of tantalum capacitor that I recently removed from a circuit board. This capacitor is only new to me and perhaps not seen before to most members of SMF. I have only found five of these so far, all five were removed from some X-ray equipment from the early 80's.

I had originally took pictures of the capacitors installed, still attached to the PCB. These I keep on my camera memory, next normally download to notebook that I use for internet & desktop sharing. I let my GF use my camera last week and she cleared about two weeks worth of photos. She didn't like something and "all those scrap pictures" was useless information too! So the picture of the board is history. I did want to show how these TA's are attached to the circuit board. It's is hard to spot these one's if you don't know what they look like. Hard in that they are installed through-hole method, for a radial type capacitor and mounted vertically, "standing up". They are used as a "Space Saving" tantalum capacitor, designed for use on densely populated circuit boards. The labeling identification on these caps was on the side of the capacitor, really hard to read when installed. The picture of that board would be very helpful in showing what to look for. How I found them, was looking at this board because there was a lot of components I had not seen before. The five TA's were part of a timing/logic circuit and I wanted to know why? Used a desktop magnifier with 360 lighting, allowed me to spot "+" on the TA's side. It was one of those first black TA's and I desoldered it, spent about a week with capacitor data sheets and catalogs (the hunt was on). A buyer here posted a picture of what he called "inserts", that narrowed it down for me considerably. I'm not sure if what he called inserts is the same, hard for me to tell as his photo is capacitors shown in a bulk load. They looked very similar to what I had. Within a hour of seeing his photo and the similarities of what I had, it was a "bingo" moment.

Mine are T330's made by KEMET Corp., a PMT (Precision Molded Tantalum) capacitor. A radial leaded, through-hole rectangular, precision molded, polar type, and a high density solid sintered tantalum pellet (mouth full). There are four series of this type of capacitor the T330, T340, T370 AND T372. All have four to seven case sizes (package). I have only these so far, but didn't know what to look for until now. I'm sure I'll find more and hope this can help others as well.

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Working on sorting some boards today, inside because it's 100+ today outside. Came across four of these gold finger boards, they were kind of hard to see and the board had the + markings all on the back side. These Cap's have all the conditions that have taught me they are indeed tantalum capacitors. 1. high grade boards 2. + markings on both the capacitor and the PCB 3. the case or body type is of a known tantalum capacitor from others I have researched 4. they all have magnetic properties. These caps are all black epoxy molded "bullet" shaped and have + marks in two different locations. They are marked MTAC, I believe that is a manufacturer, but I'm not familiar with them. I have also not been able to find data sheets on them. The board was made in 1980 and all the date codes on the components are from 1979. Does anyone know about the markings "MTAC"? Here is some pictures too!
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Sorry about the quality of pictures (too much light), they did look good on camera, not so after downloading.