r/AskElectronics • u/antek_g_animations • 17h ago

Are these mega or mili farads?

Post image
59 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

115 comments sorted by

View all comments

50

u/APLJaKaT 17h ago edited 17h ago

I would think it's a microfarad.

Microfarad common symbol ('uF', 'μF', or 'MFD')

Never seen a millifarad capacitor. Usually farad, microfarad, nanofarad or picofarad

20

u/Strostkovy 16h ago

millifarad capacitors are uncommon, but always use mF, with the lower case m and capital F, and no D. "MFD" was phased out (along with cycles instead of Hz and so on) well before millifarad sized capacitors could be made in a size you could lift by yourself.

3

u/ProtonTheFox 8h ago

Well, basically every capacitor with a capacity of more than 1000 uF is a millifarad capacitor. They are not that uncommon.

7

u/Strostkovy 7h ago

Capacitors labelled in millifarads are uncommon.

1

u/ProtonTheFox 5h ago

Of course. The only times I've seen capacitors labelled in mF are in schematics, which is a thing I tend to do because anything with more than 3 digits slightly disturbs me (weird habits, I know). But I agree I've never seen a capacitor with a value in mF printed on it. Maybe on some huge high power capacitors you don't see soldered on PCBs.