Ceramic Disc Capacitor Codes

For small values the letter r is used to denote a decimal point e g.

Ceramic disc capacitor codes.

The capacitor on the left is of a ceramic disc type capacitor that has the code 473j printed onto its body. This code indicates what the capacitance of the capacitor is. Ceramic disc capacitors have two to three digits code printed on them. The example capacitor has a 3 digit number printed on it 103.

For example if a ceramic capacitor has a code 5 and other has 47 their respective capacitance values are 5 pf and 47 pf. The third digit is the multiplier which is 1000. Ceramic disc capacitors like the one on the left are printed with a code. Unlike resistors capacitors use a wide variety of codes to describe their characteristics.

With smaller disc type capacitors tolerance is most often indicated by a single letter code which is sometimes placed by itself on the body of the capacitor or after the three digit mark such as 104z the letter z donates a tolerance of 80 percent and 20 percent. 0r5 is 0 5 1r0 is 1 0 and 2r2 is 2 2 etc. The first two digits in this case the 10 give us the first part of the value. An american company in the midst of the apollo program launched in 1961 pioneered the stacking of multiple discs to create a monolithic block.

Multiplier table ceramic number multiply by additional of zeros 0 none 0 1 10 1. Then the 4 1 st digit the 7 2 nd digit the 3 is the multiplier in pico farads pf and the letter j is the tolerance and this translates to. Ceramic disc capacitor code label will normally consist of three numbers followed by a letter. Encoding for ceramic capacitors ceramic capacitors encoding consists 1 3 digits.

The early style of the ceramic disc capacitor could be more cheaply produced than the common ceramic tube capacitors in the 1950s and 1970s. The first two numbers describe the value of the capacitor and the third number is the number of zeros in the multiplier. 47pf 1 000 3 zero s 47 000 pf 47nf or 0 047uf the j indicates a tolerance of 5. Ceramic capacitor codes how to read a ceramic capacitor with numeric coding.

When the first two numbers are multiplied with the multiplier the resulting value is the value of the capacitor in picofarads. They are very easy to decode to find the value. If the capacitor code consist only 1 or 2 digits it is simply their capacitance value in picofarads pf. The value of the capacitor is denoted in picofarads for ceramic film and tantalum capacitors but for aluminium electrolytic capacitors the value is denoted in microfarads.