3 Legged 5600uf cap

[warezwally]

Hello, im building a power supply and i have a 3 legged 5600uf electrolytic cap. Never seen a cap with 3 legs. Can someone tell me what they are, they are all different lengths


Here are some pics


Cap 1
Cap 2



Cheers

[mvs sarma]

Hi, the third pin is generally connected to body and body itself is therwise isolated from the capacitor-- toy may check up as you have the piece acrss

[AN920]

You used to get split capacitors (2 caps with one common neg terminal) used in older TV applications, although I have not seen them for quite some time.

[warezwally]

Ive been told its to stop ESR and it should be soldered like the + lead

[AN920]

Extra leg may also be for mechanical strength when mounted in a pcb and not connected to anything internally. Few simple measurements will be all that is needed to solve the mystery.

[Fowkc]

Type "three terminal capacitor" into Google and a lot of pages come up.

Looks like they're designed to conteract the inductance of the leads to lower the ESR. Or something like that, I'm no engineer.