Usch, was trying to repair my old espresso machine and I've successfully cleaned the bijeezus out of it, replaced the pump, descaled the boiler (really nice brass boiler btw), replaced all the gaskets, and now I'm down to just plugging the wires back into the sockets and look what I did: I accidentally snapped the wire off with my thick fingers. This capacitor connects to the outlet where the plug goes in the back of the machine, the third is just grounded. I don't know enough to be confident, but could I just solder this back on? I scraped off some of the shielding to expose the metal and it would seem simple enough, but like I said, I don't know enough to be safe. Can I just solder the wire back on, or do I need to replace the whole capacitor? I was trying to avoid the latter as Francis Francis (the brand) used these annoying clips for the wire connection and I would need to go to Elfa and see if they sell some kind of crimper that uses the same clips. . .
You probably can't just solder the cap back on, by the looks of things you've exposed the plates of the cap and shorted one plate to the other which would result in sparks and fire. If that cap does what I think it does then there's a good chance that the machine will work without it. Often a piece of equipment will have a cap between live and ground to reduce interference and it's not strictly required for the machine to work. Your other option is to replace the cap with another of similar spec, you'll need to find out what type of cap it is but it looks like an X2 metallised polypropylene suppression capacitor which would fit with where it was installed. If I'm reading it correctly it's a 0.33uF (330nF) X2 met' polyprop cap which should be dead easy to find. I could be wrong mind so it's at your own risk. Moriquendi
ok, that's a little bit of what I figured. Shame I need to go to the store now . . . curse these fumbly thick fingers!
+1 No need to source the exact clips, just re-use the old ones, it will look basically as new. Cut off the other old leg from the cap, bare a bit of each cut leg, slip some heatshrink over them, solder in a new cap, and heatshrink away
i think Moriquendi is right in thinking the cap is just there to reduce interference and as such may not be needed. And as mv suggested should just be able to cut the legs from the old cap and solder to them rather than getting new clips/plugs
