Tropical Fish caps with SIX color bands?

Magnetar Effects · Post by **Magnetar Effects** » 14 Nov 2012, 18:03

Is anyone familiar with Mullard C280 tropical fish capacitors that have six bands? Mullard datasheets only show five color bands. I'm looking for a color code chart to identify the following color sequence: brown, black, orange, white, yellow, brown. Normally I would call this .01uf 10% cap, but they are supposedly .1uf, and I'm looking for evidence to support that. I have found a few pics of six band C280's out there, so they do exist. Here's a few:

Datasheets or color charts would be appreciated. Thank you all.

Lucifer · Post by **Lucifer** » 14 Nov 2012, 18:23

Isn't the 'sixth' band just the body colour ?

sinner · Post by **sinner** » 14 Nov 2012, 18:54

The other day I seen little modern cosmic device named Digital Multimeter. Rumor says it's widely used by EE wizards and masterminds, some says it's great to measure caps and resistors. I'm not sure how it works with mojo 6-band tropicaps, but maybe it's worth to try...

sinner · Post by **sinner** » 14 Nov 2012, 19:02

...BTW - boutique industry thinks it is a butt probe

Magnetar Effects · Post by **Magnetar Effects** » 14 Nov 2012, 19:07

Lucifer wrote:Isn't the 'sixth' band just the body colour ?

Thank you, Lucifer! It's true what they say: The devil is in the details.

That is a strong possibility, but I can't find any conclusive info to know for sure.

Duckman · Post by **Duckman** » 14 Nov 2012, 22:19

I found this... not exact, but...
http://electriciantraining.tpub.com/141 ... 191_55.htm

deltafred · Post by **deltafred** » 14 Nov 2012, 23:50

Looking in my 1968 Mullard Data Book they only list 5 bands

1 - first capacitance value
2 - second capacitance value
3 - multilplier
4 - tolerance, white = 10%, black = 20%
5 - working voltage, it just lists red as 250V d.c. but IIRC yellow = 400V d.c.

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 15 Nov 2012, 06:19

The sixth band could probably indicate something like temperature specs + or - so many degrees C, but you mostly see this spec on Electrolytics.....

My other thought is that the 6-Band Tropical Fish caps might have tighter tolerance specs, and therefore the extra band might be a third figure in the capacitance value, like in the 5-band resistor colour-coding....

Lucifer · Post by **Lucifer** » 15 Nov 2012, 11:21

Hey Doc,

Nice attempt at solving the problem.

However, your suggestion creates another problem - it pushes all the other bands down by one - which would give some realy strange values/tolerances and working voltages.

I stand by my earlier assertion that the last 'band' is not actually a band at all, but simply the body colour.

Look at the resistors that you have - they can be blue, green, cream, grey, etc. We don't read anything into the body colors here, do we ?

The only difference with the tropical fish caps is that they are dipped in the successive colours, building up the 'code' - which is why there is no body colour in between the bands (unlike resistors).

If I'm wrong, I'll spend the rest of my days in Hades

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 15 Nov 2012, 11:28

No worries Lucifer, I have to admit that I actualy haven't had much experience with the colour-coding on Tropical Fish caps, the sixth colour band being the body colour sounds the most sensible to me, I'm totally open-minded about this in other words....

Lucifer · Post by **Lucifer** » 15 Nov 2012, 11:49

No probs Doc.

I'm in full agreement with Deltafred. Those are the specs that were in place when I was an electronic wireman at Farnell Instruments in Wetherby (Yorkshire, UK) in the late 60s and early 70s. If I remember back, I'm sure there was a light brown body colour to the 'tropical fish' caps that we used to use (they were all the rage then).

The dipping process (which was also used on the 'body-tip-spot' resistors) was obviously time consuming, which is probably why you don't see many of them (the caps or the resistors) these days.

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 15 Nov 2012, 12:01

I actually thought that the various colour-bands were painted-on rather than dipped, so if anything,I guess I've learnt something new Lucifer...

I have a Dick Smith Electronics Digital LCR Multimeter, but as I suspect that it's calibration is a bit off I no longer use it, a pity because it can measure Capacitance as well as Inductance, I might need to go shopping for a replacement one of these days....

Lucifer · Post by **Lucifer** » 15 Nov 2012, 12:20

Aha !

You've learned something new - which is actually old ! Or have you learned something 'old' which is new ?

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 15 Nov 2012, 13:54

Lucifer wrote:Aha !

You've learned something new - which is actually old ! Or have you learned something 'old' which is new ?

I think it's a bit of both.....

Lucifer · Post by **Lucifer** » 15 Nov 2012, 16:29

If you look at the photos, you can see that the body colour (light brown) is different to the darker brown band - further supporting my thesis.

However, if we had light and dark variations of each colour, just think of the numerous value/tolerance/voltage combinations we could have then ! So, if dark brown = 1, then lighter brown could be something like 0.962 ! Oh, the devil in me is getting so turned on by the possibilities for mischief !

Reminds me of the time I heated up some tinned copper wire and inserted three shortish legs into a piece of black plastic that looked like a transistor header. I made up a totally ridiculous spec sheet for this new device (if I remember, it 'could' give a regulated 5v/1A supply directly from 230v mains - without the need for a transformer, diode bridge, smoothing caps, etc). I then surreptitiously left it on someone's desk in the design department while they were all out at lunch, and nearly died laughing as they fought over it when they returned !

Oh, such devilment

Duckman · Post by **Duckman** » 15 Nov 2012, 17:37

Sinner say it clear: measure it!

Lucifer · Post by **Lucifer** » 15 Nov 2012, 17:41

No need to measure - DeltaFred has posted the official spec for these caps (above).

All the rest is just banter amongst fellow forumites.

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 15 Nov 2012, 18:06

Lucifer wrote:If you look at the photos, you can see that the body colour (light brown) is different to the darker brown band - further supporting my thesis.

However, if we had light and dark variations of each colour, just think of the numerous value/tolerance/voltage combinations we could have then ! So, if dark brown = 1, then lighter brown could be something like 0.962 ! Oh, the devil in me is getting so turned on by the possibilities for mischief !

Reminds me of the time I heated up some tinned copper wire and inserted three shortish legs into a piece of black plastic that looked like a transistor header. I made up a totally ridiculous spec sheet for this new device (if I remember, it 'could' give a regulated 5v/1A supply directly from 230v mains - without the need for a transformer, diode bridge, smoothing caps, etc). I then surreptitiously left it on someone's desk in the design department while they were all out at lunch, and nearly died laughing as they fought over it when they returned !

Oh, such devilment

Lol.....

When I was doing a certificate in Basic Electronics at Uni, we had this Lecturer who was like an ex-army Seargeant, he wanted us to do our assignments in triplicate, a real moody type, you never knew if he was being serious or just joking around because when he looked like he was serious, he was joking, and vice-versa, anyway he used to tell some hilarious yarns when we were doing our classwork, one day I was busy quietly doing my classwork and he told me to shut up, I ignored him and continued on with my classwork, he told me to shut up two more times and I looked up and said "No....make me!", he smiled and said "say that like you're saying it to Elle Mcpherson", so I said "Make me!" in a sultry tone of voice, and the whole class started laughing.....

Lucifer · Post by **Lucifer** » 15 Nov 2012, 18:50

Hi Doc - love your story.

Maybe we should have a thread for something like "a funny thing happened to me . . ." or "I did a silly thing once", etc. It would have to go in the Freestomp Cafe - but it could provide hours of fun. I'm sure most of the members here have funny tales to tell. Whadya think bro ?

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 15 Nov 2012, 19:09

I think that would be cool Lucifer, I do remember there being a jokes thread which was started by Bajaman, but I think it got bumped down to the bottom of the thread list, there were some really good jokes and funny stories in the thread, I'm pretty big on humor, I love humor in it's many forms, it's great to be able to laugh at things every now and then, so I'm all for a funny stories thread....