Should I care for Ripple Current on capacitors?

[frespe]

Hello guys!

I'm new to this awesome community and I hope I get better and better through time!

I'm about to start building my first Aquaboy DX and I came across a question: Should I care for Ripple Current on capacitors?

My power supply delivers 300 mA and I can't find any 10uF capacitor with that current flow.

Thank you very much for your time and have a nice week!

[TGP39]

Hi and welcome to the forum.  I had a similar question several months ago and I came across this article that really helped me understand how ripple current can be minimized. It explains the relationship between ESR and ripple current as well as how to find the optimal decoupling cap.  If you are designing circuits this is a must read. Luckily, Madbean does the hard work for us when he designs his PCB's.  If you are a new builder you can just follow the build instructions and not worry about proper decoupling caps, but I still think it's good information to hold on to.
     I also want to mention that your power supply rating is your MAXIMUM power rating. Your 300mA power supply will only match the load necessary to power the circuit. Most projects here require a load of maybe 15mA to maybe 150mA. All you want to do really is find a 10uF capacitor with a greater max VOLTAGE than what is required in the build doc. 35v or greater is usually more than enough. Here is the article I mentioned above.

http://www.niccomp.com/help/ESR-RippleVoltage-032012.pdf

Hope this helps.

Steve.

[frespe]

Hi and welcome to the forum.  I had a similar question several months ago and I came across this article that really helped me understand how ripple current can be minimized. It explains the relationship between ESR and ripple current as well as how to find the optimal decoupling cap.  If you are designing circuits this is a must read. Luckily, Madbean does the hard work for us when he designs his PCB's.  If you are a new builder you can just follow the build instructions and not worry about proper decoupling caps, but I still think it's good information to hold on to.
     I also want to mention that your power supply rating is your MAXIMUM power rating. Your 300mA power supply will only match the load necessary to power the circuit. Most projects here require a load of maybe 15mA to maybe 150mA. All you want to do really is find a 10uF capacitor with a greater max VOLTAGE than what is required in the build doc. 35v or greater is usually more than enough. Here is the article I mentioned above.

http://www.niccomp.com/help/ESR-RippleVoltage-032012.pdf

Hope this helps.

Steve.

Thanks Steve, that was really helpful

Have a nice one!

Francisco