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previous: John Culp Any resistor can arc over more or l... -- 7/5/2003 3:45 AM

Re: What type of resistors are best?

7/5/2003 11:42 PM
Sleebo_The_Beebo	Re: What type of resistors are best? Usually I find that carbon resistors go bad when some other component fails such as a cap shorting out that causes the resistor to pull lots of current. Whenever I find a bad resistor, I usually replace any caps around it also, for safety and reliability reasons. I don't have tons of experience at this kind of thing but the only resistor I've ever had go bad by itself was a wirewound in a PS that opened. Seems the more heat you have on a resistor the more it is prone to open up. And it seems they always open up rather than short when they go bad. Moral of the story is to use high wattage values, way overrated. But I agree with you that carbons drift overtime and are probably less reliable than films.

7/5/2003 11:42 PM

Sleebo_The_Beebo

Re: What type of resistors are best?

Usually I find that carbon resistors go bad when some other component fails such as a cap shorting out that causes the resistor to pull lots of current. Whenever I find a bad resistor, I usually replace any caps around it also, for safety and reliability reasons.

I don't have tons of experience at this kind of thing but the only resistor I've ever had go bad by itself was a wirewound in a PS that opened. Seems the more heat you have on a resistor the more it is prone to open up. And it seems they always open up rather than short when they go bad. Moral of the story is to use high wattage values, way overrated.

But I agree with you that carbons drift overtime and are probably less reliable than films.