What is the best way to determine the end-of-life time-line for ICs other than contacting the manufacturer directly? Is there a central registry or service where I can subscribe and get EOL notifications for the parts used in my designs? How does everybody else handle EOL problems?
Electronic – Determining End-Of-Life for electronic components
lifetimesourcing
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Electrolytic capacitors are probably the most common short life component. Some are only rated for 2000 hours or less, which really isn't much for many devices. However, their life can be significantly extended by running them below max voltage and temperature.
LEDs are another component that wears out with time. Again running below max rated current will extend life. For good LED life getting it from one of the few major manufacturers, and making sure there's no cheating in the supply chain, is important.
Photovoltaic cells also degrade with age and use.
The cathode coating of vaccuum tubes wears out. As a result, the work function goes up and more anode voltage is required to get the same current.
The fillament of a incadescent bulb keeps shedding atoms, and eventually wears thin and breaks. Fillament life is inversely proportional to something like the 12th power of the applied voltage (it may not be exactly 12, but it is quite surprisingly high if you haven't thought about it before).
Metal oxide varistors (MOVs) wear out a little every time they absorb energy.
Then of course there are batteries, fuses, and the like which are intended for limited operation, but that's not what were talking about here.
Most other components don't really wear out with use as long as their specs are not violated. Plastic will eventually degrade, silicon dopants will diffuse, etc, but these are such slow processes to be irrelvant in normal settings.
From what I understand, with low voltage it isn't very much of a problem (as the filament is thicker)
With 120, 240V bulbs, with very thin filament, DC leads to shorter life due to some sort of... filament mobility...
Here's a quote from Osram's site. Mind you this is specific to halogen bulbs, which do run the filament in more torturous conditions. I'm not certain if it matters as much on standard incandescents? Someone can fill us in.
Come to think of it, it likely to only affect halogens, due to their method of operation. They boil filament off during normal operation, and it resettles on itself, due to reaction with the halogen gas. Presumably it settles to one side when running on DC supply, leading to the much shorter life.
Question
Can halogen lamps also be operated with direct current? Answer
With low-wattage, high-voltage (230, 240 V) halogen lamps, a drastic reduction in the service life must be expected with DC operation. For example, with the 60 W lamp only approximately 15 % of the nominal value is achieved. The reason for this is the increasing material movements in the tungsten wire of the filament. Higher-wattage lamps with their larger wire diameter are less critical in DC operation. This is similar for the low-voltage lamps (12 V), as here the critical limit is low due to the generally larger wire diameter of these lamps, i.e. below 20 W.
Best Answer
There are few professional services which integrate notifications from manufacturers and can manage your BOM:
Probably others I'm not aware of.
Most of big companies in aerospace and defense business subscribe to one of these services but they have dedicated component management departments.
Also only few components really need attention for EOL notifications, for instance memories (DDR). EOL notifications are submitted almost 1 year in advance so you can check the PCN on a monthly or weekly basis of few manufacturers for your critical components.