A recent repair of an analog-to-digital converter brought up the subject of the aging of electronic components. Electronic components all age at different rates depending on how they are being used.
Example: A 100uf 50v capacitor used as a filtering component in a power supply can see a lifetime of five years or more. The same capacitor used in a High Frequency Inverter Drive can show failure after only three years of service.
Industrial equipment, in most cases, ages at different rates. A system that includes drives, motors, power supplies, monitors, and sensors that work together to complete a task, will have elements fail at different times because of the different levels of stress the internal components of that element are subjected to. A Direct Current (DC) Drive outputs higher voltage and current to a motor than say a power supply outputting to an analog relay board assembly. The everyday high voltage and current the DC drive operates will reduce the life of unit as a whole much more quickly than the power supply does.
Also, aging components consume more power than new components. Thus, industrial equipment that has several years of usage can be expected to consume more power than a new unit of the same model. So keep in mind that a machine that has worked well over the years will increase its power consumption, as was the case with the analog-to-digital converter.
