What are these scored lines on the ends of electrolytic capacitors?
They are there to channel the debris in a known direction should the capacitor turn into a bomb. Really :-). However, exploding capacitors aren’t all THAT common in properly designed equipment…. (Well, except for that EPROM programmer that had a tantalum electrolytic installed backwards at the factory. Six months later – K-Blam!) (From: Gary Woods (gwoods@wrgb.com)). If you look in a DigiKey catalog, they detail the ‘Vent Test’ in which an electrolytic cap is overloaded in a specified way and the can fails expelling the material *only* through that scored portion. Sounds like material for another urban legend; like the supplier who carefully tested each incoming fuse for blowing in a specified time at a specified overload. Of course, the people trying to *use* those fuses didn’t appreciate how nicely they passed these tests! You can do a vent test by hooking up an electrolytic to your ‘suicide cord’ and plugging it into 110 VAC. Entertaining. (I did NOT recommend you do this, and am
