diytube.com

CEKPETHO


There are a lot of "interesting" Russian military surplus capacitors, including PIO, Teflon, as well as more common mylar, and poly)

Sometimes the seller's description gives no indication of the cap's specifications other than simply capacitance and working voltage.

I've been doing a bit of research, (this is still a work in progress) and attempting to figure out this mysterious
"Sekret Kommie Kaps Kode" and I have some preliminary results:

(Note, some of the letter suffixes use Cyrillic letters, I can't print them here, I'll use the English equivalent for now)

K15-4 Ceramic HV "doorknobs"
K15-5 Ceramic HV Disc

K31 Silver Mica "kidney bean" style cap

K40P-2B Paper in Oil, 5% tol.
K40U-9V Paper In Oil , Silver body, 10% tol.

K41-1A PIO, High Voltage "Pulse" caps

K42U-2 PIO, green painted body (K75 are better)

K50 Aluminum Electrrolytic

K71-7V Polystyrol "High Tolerance" 1% or 2% tol.

K72P-6 Teflon Dielectric 5% tol. (see example below)

K73-14 PETP High Voltage
K73-15 PETP / Dry Mylar
K73-16 PETP / Dry mylar
K73P-4 "tub " style AC capacitors (may be paper or mylar, still TBD)

K74 HV caps

K75 Polyprop In Oil

K75-10 PIO, Green body (these are the prime quality PIO)
K75-15 PIO, High Voltage "tub"
K75-17 PIO High Voltage "tub"
K75-24 PIO Green body tubular (see example below)
K75-28 PIO High Voltage "tub"

BMT-2 Paper In Oil

FGT High Voltage Teflon Dielectric, Ceramic body (almost beer can size)

FT-1 Teflon Military Grade glass sealed, aluminum body (smallerst)
FT-2 Teflon Military Grade glass sealed, aluminum body
FT-3 Teflon Military Grade glass sealed, aluminum body (largest)

KBG PIO (no, this isn't the KGB, they're a different entity altogether)

KBI HV "doorknob" RF / Transmitting cap

KSO Silver-Mica "precision" caps

MBG Paper-Aluminum "tub" AC caps

The letters OTK are initials for "Otdyel Technicheskovo Kontrolya" Oтдел Техническово Контроля or Bureau of Technical Control, which indicates that special mil-spec or industrial testing standards are applied. In other words, "Top Shelf"

CEKPETHO

Oh, yeah, this means "Secret" in Russian, and in Cyrillic-looking letters Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_11


An example of the teflon dielectric, metal body, sealed glass capacitor,



0.1 uF, +/- 5%, 500V (this is a large cap, about the size and heft of a D cell battery)

A close-up of the marking on one of the K75 green PIO caps, this time they use European/English style, rather than Cyrillic letters)

[img]http://www.tonywelsh.com/images/K75-24_2[1].2uF_400V-nom.jpg[/img]

I've found LOTs more data to be triaged / munched and otherwise processed before posting.

A good reference site is here: http://www.luch.biz/lubitel1/eparts/

I will be interested in all of your Russian cap research; maybe even measuring and listening to various types. I thought you might be interested in a post I picked up some time ago on dielectrics and quality of Russian caps (listed below). The preference for the K40 type (silver body for all I have seen) over K75 was also confirmed by a more recent post on AA.

Please keep us informed,
Francois
=============================================
Posted by Ken_ (A) on October 31, 2003 at 17:26:58
In Reply to: Re: do Russian capacitors suck? posted by Jenya on October 31, 2003 at 10:41:02:

These are not the Cyrillic markings but you should be able to decipher
Dielectric types of some russian caps:
(russian letters alliterated in latin)
K31, SSG, SGM, KSO - mica, some types with silver - good
K40 - PIO - very good
MBGxx, KBG-xx, OMBG - PIO
K42, MBM, BM-x - paper (w/o oil ??)
K70, K71 - Polystyren ("polystirol") - good
K72, FT - teflon ("ftoroplast") - THE BEST
K73 - Polythelene Teraphthalate film ("lavsan") - poor
K75 - combined Paper+Film (Polythelene Teraphthalate??, with or w/o oil??)
K76 - Laquer film
K78 - Polypropilen
=============================================

I just received another shipment of Komrade Kaps from over there, the K75 series "green meanies" in 2.2 and 1.0 uF, 400V, 10%. Mostly intended for parafeed coupling, and for DC bypassing (maybe they'll be nicer than Solen Fastcaps). The K40s do look to be of better overall quality, glass seals, and silver body, more reminescent of Vitamin Qs of the golden era.

/ed B in NH

This file is huge (2.64 MB PDF file) ELCOD Capacotirs from Russia, this has enormous amount of detail on many of the paper-film capacitors.
It is about 175 pages long, so be patient while downloading... It is in both English and Russian

http://www.elcod.spb.ru/catalogue.pdf

Anotrher Russian capacitor company "Globex" has a site which lists caps by type and nummers, this corresponds well with earlier data.

http://globex.com.ru/products/Capacitors/index_2.shtml

It's a start...

/ed B in NH

To bring this back from the dead....
I believe that most of this info is right; with the exception that the K75s are polyprop in oil, not paper in oil. Confusion abounds as everyone lists these as PIO - which we take for granted to be paper in oil.

I would probably try these in my amp except for the prohibitively large numbers I seem to need to buy them in... Sure, I'd like some .047 and .47uF 400V caps, but not a crate lot 500000 of them

You can find them on E-bay, I regularly deal with "anthonywest" and "kwtubes" and "sovcom" , instead of five hundred gazillion pieces, they deal in small lots between 5 and 25 units per batch. They also have teflon caps, but they are huge, and way too large to mount on a PCB, these arebest for P2P wiring jobs. Both AW and KWT are a good source for tubes, as well.

I wonder how well polyprop in oil stacks up against paper in oil...



/ed B in NH

Ed,
I have a couple of the '40s which I will be using...I assure you these are too big for the PCB as well.
I read a link somewhere that the '75s were quite nice, but that the 40's had the overall 'sound'. I guess it is all about what 'sound' you are looking for :D

The K40s can be easily made to fit, with a little creative lead bending.
I like them, they have the same look as the classic Sprage Vitamin Q caps of so long ago.

The Poseidon boards have more space and mounting options for the coupling caps, I've fit K75 0,1 uF 500V "green meanies" on them with no poblem, just a little lead bending. With the metal casing, it's a good idea to leave a little space between the cap and the PC board, anyway.

.ed B

Interesting Email. I guess what I would like to know now, is what values were (are ?) available ?

I have only seen .1uf and .47uf K40's. I think there were a broader range of K75s available.

EWBrown wrote:Another Russian capacitor company "Globex" has a site which lists caps by type and nummers, this corresponds well with earlier data.

http://globex.com.ru/products/Capacitors/index_2.shtml

It's a start...

/ed B in NH

anybody tried actually ordering from this place? Their site seems a little shady, but if they really do have everything in stock that's listed on their site, and I'll actually get what I pay them for before 2010, that'd be awesome

Slightly off topic:

I started a class in Russian, but quickly dropped out. Strange alphabet.

Much later, I visited Russia. It was interesting how similar the Cyrillic alphabet is to English. Traffic stop signs say: CTOP. It seems that C sounds like our S?

eBay seems to have dozens of Russian vendors selling all kinds
of parts ... I think that's where the guys on here snag all the
stuff. I have some caps, Numitron tubes, and some tubes,
bot the re-labeled versions and the originals.

dcriner wrote:Slightly off topic:

I started a class in Russian, but quickly dropped out. Strange alphabet.

Much later, I visited Russia. It was interesting how similar the Cyrillic alphabet is to English. Traffic stop signs say: CTOP. It seems that C sounds like our S?

hmm, I took russian for 4 years and went there for 3 weeks on an exchange trip, but the Cyrillic alphabet never seemed too similar to ours, to me anyway. And are you sure that sign didn't say "СТОП"? That isn't really a Russian word, just a phonetic spelling of the word "stop" using russian letters. For some things (signs are a big one) they will do this because it's easier to make a sign that says СТОП rather than one that says ПОЛОЖЙТЬ, plus it's more recognizable to non-Russian speaking westerners. CTOP would be the Russian phonetic spelling of "store". Anyway, it was hard but taking Russian was a blast, and I'm not by any stretch of the imagination one who's big into learning other languages. My exchange trip there the most enlightening 3 weeks of my life. One, you learned the language SOO much faster by actually being there were everyone's speaking it at normal speed 24/7 as opposed to us awkwardly trying to piece together sentences for 1 hour five days a week. But even more enlightening was learning and, as much as can be done in 3 weeks, assimilating such a different culture and way of life. Anyway....

anyone had any luck ordering from that place?