What is the best way to test capacitors?

[janengelbrecht]

Or the 37 dollar thing for casual repair + DER EE DE-5000 for more serious LCR measurments. Much better investment for that money.

I second that  Of course its nice to be able to measure Inductors too

[G0HZU]

I've never ever owned an ESR meter or an LCR meter because the cheap ones are usually too flawed in their operation for me to want to have one. But they can be useful faultfinding tools for some users.

However, low cost H/H ESR meters do seem to be getting better recently and the DE-5000 does look to be a decent instrument.

I currently use a crude in circuit test setup using a sense resistor and some other test gear when doing initial faultfinding and this crudely looks for faulty Hi Z caps. But if I want to measure a cap reasonably reliably for capacitance and ESR then I will remove it and use a pure sinewave source, a known sense resistor and a decent DMM or scope. Then put the measurements into a calculator and calculate the capacitance and ESR using classic impedance equations. It's a slow method but miles better than the traditional cheap old school ESR meters in terms of reliability of measurement and I know I'm measuring the cap at a known frequency and I can also feed in an external DC bias to the cap at the same time when testing it.

Few people will have the patience to use the slow (classic) manual method I use so If someone was going to buy an ESR meter then the DE-5000 looks to be far and away the best budget buy if you want something decent

[madires]

madires: ?? No menu present..perhaps ive got some old crappy firmware then Its china junk..so who knows Unless.....does the button has extra functions...?? Something about the time you press it ??

Yes, the menu in the k-firmware is triggered by a long key press (>500ms). IIRC, the in-circuit ESR was included in 1.10k (selected by the main menu), but I don't know on which version the modified firmware is based. The clones with the graphics display look nice but most aren't supported by the official firmware. If you stay with the 16x2 text display you can update the firmware to the current k or m firmware. The k-firmware supports ST7565 compatible displays but maxes out the flash memory of the ATmega328, i.e. not all features will be avaialible in future. And I haven't seen any clones with the 644 yet.

[janengelbrecht]

madires: ?? No menu present..perhaps ive got some old crappy firmware then Its china junk..so who knows Unless.....does the button has extra functions...?? Something about the time you press it ??

Yes, the menu in the k-firmware is triggered by a long key press (>500ms). IIRC, the in-circuit ESR was included in 1.10k (selected by the main menu), but I don't know on which version the modified firmware is based. The clones with the graphics display look nice but most aren't supported by the official firmware. If you stay with the 16x2 text display you can update the firmware to the current k or m firmware. The k-firmware supports ST7565 compatible displays but maxes out the flash memory of the ATmega328, i.e. not all features will be avaialible in future. And I haven't seen any clones with the 644 yet.

Thx dude... you made my day

[G0HZU]

Azhur,

My opinion on the best way is not just my own. I am sure if you contacted a professional business in  your area that fixes electronic equipment like TVs and Radios etc, they would tell you that they don't even own or use an ESR meter.

I have visited many repair shops and know that from discussing repair methods, my peers have also known that a substitution/bridging method is the most  common and effective practice.

I would recommend to you that you call a repair shop or two before you waste money on equipment you do not need for quick and effective repair.

If you have a scope and a signal generator, here you go:



Personally, just because others may "troubleshoot" with different methods, doesn't mean that everyone else that does it differently is wrong.

And, there are plenty of circuits via google search that can be built very cheaply and accomplish the job.

I've seen that method a few times now... However, the W2AEW method in the video doen't make best use of the test gear and doesn't give good results in terms of time spent.

However, you 'can' measure capacitance and ESR quite accurately just using a clean signal source, a decent DMM on ACV and a sense resistor and a few sums. Obviously, the DMM has to be able to work well up to test frequencies up to about 100kHz or you can use a scope instead. But the results using the classic impedance calculations based on the 3 voltage method or the voltage/phase method will take you to a different class of measurement using the same (or even simpler) tools as W2AEW was using.

[Vito_R]

Azhur,

My opinion on the best way is not just my own. I am sure if you contacted a professional business in  your area that fixes electronic equipment like TVs and Radios etc, they would tell you that they don't even own or use an ESR meter.

I have visited many repair shops and know that from discussing repair methods, my peers have also known that a substitution/bridging method is the most  common and effective practice.

Then they are piss poor repair business and idiots doing their job half assed way. ESR meter is number one instrument when I repair something, multimeter is on second place, oscilloscope on third. If you repair devices more than a few times a year, this is must have instrument.

100% Agreed and well said!

[Vito_R]

Thanks guys, I think I will go with PEAK Atlas ESR70 it costs about $140 on ebay
do you guys recommend?

Azhar i'm sure you'll love it.  Highly recommended and a good investment.  I use it everyday and it's one of my most valuable pieces of test equipment after my Fluke multimeter.  It's very high quality, fast and accurate, and made in the UK not china.  The only thing it doesn't do is test caps less then 0.5uf.  Excellent choice i'm sure you'll be completely satisfied.

[Azhar]

Thanks guys, I think I will go with PEAK Atlas ESR70 it costs about $140 on ebay
do you guys recommend?

Azhar i'm sure you'll love it.  Highly recommended and a good investment.  I use it everyday and it's one of my most valuable pieces of test equipment after my Fluke multimeter.  It's very high quality, fast and accurate, and made in the UK not china.  The only thing it doesn't do is test caps less then 0.5uf.  Excellent choice i'm sure you'll be completely satisfied.

people here started discussing how to measure ESR and precise measurements! I am not interested in measurements, math and complicated methods, all what I need is a tool that helps me find out which cap is bad in order to replace it! that's it!
I watched reviews for the ESR70 and I like it, it is simple and do the job I believe.
Thanks Vito_R for the advice! 

[xwarp]

Thanks guys, I think I will go with PEAK Atlas ESR70 it costs about $140 on ebay
do you guys recommend?

Azhar i'm sure you'll love it.  Highly recommended and a good investment.  I use it everyday and it's one of my most valuable pieces of test equipment after my Fluke multimeter.  It's very high quality, fast and accurate, and made in the UK not china.  The only thing it doesn't do is test caps less then 0.5uf.  Excellent choice i'm sure you'll be completely satisfied.

people here started discussing how to measure ESR and precise measurements! I am not interested in measurements, math and complicated methods, all what I need is a tool that helps me find out which cap is bad in order to replace it! that's it!
I watched reviews for the ESR70 and I like it, it is simple and do the job I believe.
Thanks Vito_R for the advice! 

I kind of thought that all the different suggestions were of help to me.

Maybe you should have made the thread title "I need the fastest, simplest, no brainer esr tester." instead as that would have been a little more specific.

[Azhar]

I kind of thought that all the different suggestions were of help to me.

Maybe you should have made the thread title "I need the fastest, simplest, no brainer esr tester." instead as that would have been a little more specific.

My bad!