Is there a way to get a good estimate on the life of a capacitor without an ESR meter?
Especially something a little more accurate than "it's good" or "it's bad". Like something that would estimate a cap being within 10% of specs or 80% of specs, etc.
Thanks!
Back in the day, we didn't have ESR meters.
An LCR bridge will tell you the capacitance----if that is very low, you don't have to mess around with ESR, just change the thing!
In later years, I was lucky enough to work where we had a digital LCR meter.
It measured capacitance, inductance & resistance.
As well as basic LCR. It could also determine the "Q" of an inductor, & what it called "loss" in a capacitor (basically another name for ESR).
I also had an adaptor for a DMM which read capacitance.
Over time, I noticed that this device would show a cap with high ESR as being low in capacitance, so that was useful if someone else was using the LCR meter.
Fixing stuff up for work, it took more time to remove, test, & resolder electrolytic caps with stubby leads than to just fit new ones, with leads you could cut to length, & make nice new solder joints.
Time being money, & electros being cheap, it was my usual practice to change them "scattergun" style.
Being able to test unusual ones was very useful,though.