Ceramic Disc Capacitor Markings

Ceramic disc capacitors markings are a two or three digit value this tutorial explains how use the code to determine the capacitance in farads.

Ceramic disc capacitor markings. A guide to understanding ceramic disc capacitor values. They are very easy to decode to find the value. This letter represents the tolerance of the capacitor meaning how close the actual value of the capacitor can be expected to be to the indicated value of the capacitor. The above image shows a pair of ceramic disk capacitors labeled only as 10 and 15 these capacitors and all those under 1000pf directly show their capacitance in picofarads.

Ceramic disc capacitors have two to three digits code printed on them. There are several tolerance marking systems used. The first is used with small ceramic capacitors and appears as a single letter. The first two numbers describe the value of the capacitor and the third number is the number of zeros in the multiplier.

This indicates a 22µf capacitor with a maximum voltage of 6v. Two of the most common are shown here. When the first two numbers are multiplied with the multiplier the resulting value is the value of the capacitor in picofarads. Ceramic capacitors which are usually tiny pancakes with two pins typically list the tolerance value as one letter immediately after the three digit capacitance value.

The third digit is the multiplier which is 1000. Ceramic disc capacitor code label will normally consist of three numbers followed by a letter. The first two significant digits represent the first two digits of the actual value which is 47. There is no negative indicator as this capacitor doesn t have a dedicated polarity and can be installed either way.

A variety of schemes may be used.