Failed start capacitors?

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

It's official.

As of this morning in my workshop, every cap-started motor that was made after the year 2000 has suffered at least one failed cap. Every bloody one of 'em, even the machines only a couple of years old.

Off the top of my head, the tally is now a TS, 2x midi-lathes, linisher, belt sander, "bench" pedestal drill and, today, the BS.

Considering that my main daily users are, without exception, over 30 years old and none of 'em has had a start cap replacement in their lives (well... to the best of my knowledge) I'm left with just one question for modern manufacturers... WTH? :~

[bueller]

Welcome to modern manufacturing! One of the reasons I prefer restoring older machines over buying new, very little is made to last these days.

[ericks2]

Best is to replace them with good quality caps:)

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

Best is to replace them with good quality caps:)

What... the ones salvaged from 30yo machines? :D

[NCArcher]

Capacitors are, unfortunately, something that can be made to work very cheaply or they can be made properly to last many years. Buying better quality caps would certainly solve the problem.
I'm pretty sure the motor manufacturers would source the caps as cheaply as possible as long as they worked when the left the shop. I follow a few electronics blogs and the first thing they check when opening up any electronics or restoring older equipment is the brand/quality of the capacitors. A very common cause of failure

[rrich]

Considering that I am an old propeller head. . . . .

If you have a really crappy electricity supplier, (Spikes and over voltages) it would not surprise me that you experience multiple capacitor failures. Generally speaking capacitors are voltage sensitive and keeping the Farad value the same, higher voltage rated capacitors can be substituted.

Also on the feed to the machine, a 350 volt varistor can save the capacitor. The varistor sacrifices itself in the event of a spike. For each machine three varistors are needed; one across the line, one from hot to ground and one from neutral to ground.