Need Help with a capacitor

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to this forum and I have little knowledge of how capacitors work. I am currently trying to replace what looks like a blown capacitor in my denon receiver. It's a 100uf 200V capacitor. The top of the capicitor is somewhat open and it looks like some material is sticking out through the top. I was wondering does this capacitor still need to be discharged as I really dont want to shock myself and I'm not sure how powerful a capacitor with this rating is? Is 100uf 200v lethal? If not I was thinking of buying some insulated screwdrivers to test the charge in it? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and sorry for my noob questions like this.

Smirk88 said:

Is 100uf 200v lethal?

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Unlikely for a healthy person.
But it will give you a "bit of a nip!"

Smirk88 said:

I was wondering does this capacitor still need to be discharged

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Probably not.
After a few minutes it is most likely that the cap will have discharged through the receiver circuitry.

If you had a multimeter, you could measure the voltage on the terminals, just to be sure.

In the absence of a meter, just short across the two terminals for a few seconds using a screwdriver blade.

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, make sure that the thing is not plugged into the mains before you do this.

JimB

Thanks JimB for your info I really appreciate it. I feel more confident in actually touching this thing now that I know it wont kill me I'm going to my local harbor freight to pickup some insulated 1k volt rated screwdrivers. Thanks again!

JimB said:

After a few minutes it is most likely that the cap will have discharged through the receiver circuitry.

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or through itself.... it's not much of a capacitor at this point. but it's always good to check anyway. get in the habit of checking for stored voltages on caps before doing anything else. keep a 10k 5 watt resistor (it's best if you have alligator clips connected to it) on the workbench for discharging caps. i have a resistor on a dual banana plug, which fits in the banana plugs of my DMM. i plug it in across the probes and then touch the probes to the cap, so i can watch the voltage. when you get down to between 2 and 5 volts, that's usually safe enough to handle the board without worrying about getting bit.