Definition of Capacitor Terms

A few new pages have been added to the dictionary of Capacitor terms. The first new page is the Definition of Insulation Resistance, which is linked off the page starting with the Definition of Impedance ['I' to 'L' terms].

While the second new page covers the Definition of Failure Rate, which is linked off the page that did start with the Definition of Farad ['F' terms]. In addition a link to the Capacitor Failure Rate definition was also placed on the page covering How to Derate a Capacitor.

A number of pages in that section were also updated to include both pages in the 'D' portion; Definition of DC Leakage and Definition of Dielectric. Also the Definition of ESR.

I also added the links from the new pages to the HTML Sitemap, to keep that up to date. The sitemap was just updated yesterday to include all the page additions over the last few months. Of course the sitemap lists all the pages contain in the Engineering Website.

I should be adding a few other sub pages to the Capacitor Dictionary in a few days. Like these pages additions today, they should be a page to hold the graphic of some type of capacitor characteristic.

555 Timer Operation

Following the last post concerning the 555 Timer IC circuits, I added a new page to cover the functional operation of the 555 Timer. This page is written a bit different then the previous pages and tries to explain how the 555 IC functions. Although it does use the circuit setup of a Monostable Multivibrator to explain how a 555 functions, the page is written from a different perspective then the existing 555 Monostable listing.

It does use some of the same text as the Monostable 555 circuit, so I still need to re-read it to fix the text flow; but I did up-load the page today regardless. A few of the same 555 graphic files are reused as well, in addition to a new 555 schematic picture. I have two more 555 circuit graphics, so I plan to generate two more pages today, and I'll be sure to update the page as I add those new links.

At first I was going to have the new page act as a top level topic for the 555, it turned out that the current 555 circuit pages were only listed in passing. Currently the only page listing that references how a 555 functions is the page covering Functional IC Schematics [Internal IC Schematics]. Or not, I just added the link to the other three 555 circuit pages.

Now I've been going to design reviews for 25 years and don't recall ever seeing a 555 IC in any review. That's not to say there any thing wrong with the 555, but it does deserve a mention. So I may generate a page to cover that opinion, regardless of the fact that 100,000's are sold each year. The 555 functional page is already to long, so it's a new topic anyway and gets a new page.

Graphic; IC Multivibrator Block Diagram.