Hello Font,
We have started to experience this crackling from the HV capacitor over the last 6 months.
We see it happening when performing the automatic disarm test where the defib is in the charged state for around 30 secs before bleeding off the energy. We have started to inspect the capacitor terminals but have yet to experience any electrolyte leakage.
We have contacted Philips who confirm the capacitor, this is arkward as they no longer supply the part.
The device itself is recommended as a 7 yesr lifespan and i assume as you are experiencing this problem all of your units are over that age. The parts in the patient circuit im pretty sure are limited lifespan so the HV capacitor experiencing this problem is expected after 7 years.
I think that HV electrolytic capacitors have a 10-20 year lifespan before they start to dry out.
If like us you have no money to spend on new defibrillators this year will cause somewhat of a problem.
As long as the defib passes all tests i have been informed that it is ok to go back into service, but have also been recommended that these models should be RFS now.
At the moment if our codemaster passes all tests, with no evident leakage from the HV capacitor and if the popping is only slight, we are logging this information and returning the device back into service.
How much popping from the capacitor do you allow before you decide to remove the defib from service? How can you quantify that?
We cant just remove all of our defibs without replacing them....can we?
If you reach a solution Font then let us know.
