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!