Hi. The motor start capacitor on my tablesaw finally died. I'm looking to get a new one but am having trouble finding the exact one. I attached a picture. The ones I see on amazon for 150MFD don't have the screw terminals but the 200MFD does. Would it do damage getting the 200?
Thanks
200MFD Capacitor on Amazon
I'm going to assume it's a single phase motor.
To heavily generalize what the MFD does on a starting capacitor is it essentially takes the power being given to the motor and stores it so that when the motor starts up and requires more power to begin turning, it has enough electricity to keep the timing correct.
So what putting a capacitor with a higher MFD rating will do is give the motor slightly (very slightly) more torque while it spins up because it has more power available to it. This is probably just fine. However, it COULD increase the wear on the motor because it's handling more energy then it was designed for. I highly doubt this would be a problem though. It also means the cap will run a little hotter and if your motor has a housing for the cap that wasn't designed for higher heat, it could shorten the life of the cap. I doubt 50MF would generate that much more heat though.
Personally, I would just solder the leads to a non-screw-type lead and call it a day.