A while ago I mentioned that my Farnell G series based 360 W bench supply was destroying mains switches and the went bang after I fitted a 0.5R in sresies with the switch
. I suspected a RIFA.
So dug it out of the stack today and got stuck in unfortunalty it's hard to get at the suspect. The G360 is squeezed into a 1/2 rack 3U Vero bench case with panel meters aux supply, fan etc. Even with the PSU out it's still another 21 screws to get to the PCB.
So confirmed RIFA'd but no smoke or black gunge see photo. Replaced with a Philips 0.1yuF plastic X2 all back together and working. Just 3 hours work.
One thing that is not commonly known about the Farnell G series (switchers of 30, 60, 120, 240, 360 and 600W with nominal voltages 6, 12, 15, 24, 30 and 48V) is that while the built in adjustment is only about +10 -20% of nominal , they will all go down to a bout 1.5V at full rated current with an external control. Apart from adjustable current limit (not too hard to add) they make a good basis for an adjustable supply. They are generally reliable. I gave three 5V 60A ones to a repeater group on the south coast to use in series (allowed by design) as a 14V supply for a repeater. They were going strong after 20 years of 24/7 operation when the repeter was upgraded. They were not even new when I aquired them! There a couple of big RIFAs in the G series output circuit but these do not fail as they are not seeing full mains voltage or spikes.