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Technical articles, selection guides and industry insights about electronic components, sourcing and PCB design.

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Film Capacitor Selection: DC Link, Snubber and Class X/Y Safety Caps

Film capacitors get chosen last and specified least. They are the part you reach for when a ceramic loses most of its capacitance under bias and an electrolytic will not survive the ripple, and the three jobs they usually do, mains suppression, DC link and snubber, have almost nothing in common beyond the dielectric. Picking one means answering a different question in each case.

Passive Components

Rectifier Diode Selection: Schottky, Fast Recovery and Standard Compared

A rectifier diode is an easy part to choose from habit. The 1N4007 is in the parts bin, it is rated 1000 V and 1 A, and it goes into the design. Put that same diode in the freewheel position of a 100 kHz buck converter and the converter runs hot and radiates. Forward drop is the number everyone quotes, and it is rarely the one that decides.

Semiconductors

Terminal Block Selection: Screw vs Push-In, Pluggable vs Fixed

Terminal blocks are among the cheapest parts in a control panel and a recurring source of intermittent faults in one. A loose screw terminal on a vibrating machine gives you a fault that appears under load, disappears when a technician touches the wire, and takes a day to find. The clamping technology you choose decides whether that failure mode exists at all.

Connectors