Ceramic Capacitor Values Reading

How to read capacitance values on a capacitor by doug lowe if there s enough room on the capacitor most manufacturers of electronics components print the capacitance directly on the capacitor along with other information such as the working voltage and perhaps the tolerance.

Ceramic capacitor values reading.

These are small nonpolarized caps with yellow blob for their body. About ceramic capacitor codes. A 220nf electrolytic capacitor will be labeled as 0 22µf and not 220nf. This letter represents the tolerance of the capacitor meaning how close the actual value of the capacitor can be expected to be.

From left to right. If you are new to capacitor codes then the best way to start is with a chart because that way you can see the arrangement of the code. Hence the value of the capacitor above is 47000 pf 5. As they are quite big compared to the rest the value is directly written in the enclosure the value unit is also specified but as they have large capacitance values the chosen unit is the microfarad µf almost 100 of the time even when the unit is smaller i e.

Electrolytic capacitors are pretty simple to read. We d need a microscope to read them. Read the tolerance code on ceramic capacitors. It s difficult to read their values even with the code.

This is why manufacturers started using a three digit code to mark ceramic capacitors. A ceramic disc capacitor does not have a polarity and connects in any direction on the printed circuit board. Method of finding the value meaning of codes of capacitor. Imagine if we had to shrink their complete specifications down and print them on the capacitor.

10 pf 22 pf 100 pf 1 nf 10 nf 100 nf. A ceramic capacitor is a fixed value capacitor where the ceramic material acts as the dielectric it is constructed of two or more alternating layers of ceramic and a metal layer acting as the electrodes the composition of the ceramic material defines the electrical behavior and therefore applications. Here is how to read ceramic capacitor values. Reading values printed on electrolytic capacitors is easy digits on ceramic capacitors need to know some theory.

Like resistors has some coding which needs to decipher printed digits on ceramic capacitors also needs deciphering. In this video i have discussed how to read and understand the ceramic capacitor value from the capacitor code with some capacitor code examples like 22 pf. The smaller values in the kit are 50v rated ceramic capacitors. Ceramic capacitors which are usually tiny pancakes with two pins typically list the tolerance value as one letter immediately after the three digit capacitance value.

The first two numbers describe the value of the capacitor and the third number is the number of zeros in the multiplier.