Hi everyone
I'm looking for advices on my methodology for checking up the conditions of a bunch of large electrolitic caps, ranging from 33000 to 500000 uF, I've stockpiled in a couple of decades of salvaging linear equipment. Just to check if there's still something usefull in that colorful pile of cans or if they are just taking usefull space.
Keep in mind I'm a mere hobbist, seriously equipped , but still an hobbist.
Since these caps are way to large for my dedicated test gear, I obviously have to test everything manually.
I start by slowly charging each cap overnight while limiting the current to 10-100mA depending on the rated capacitance.
The following day I check the leakage current by measuring how much current is still flowing into the cap at its rated voltage.
Not much to say about the capacitance, I just charge the cap through a suitable resistor, check at the oscilloscope how much time it took to reach 63.2% of the maximum voltage then do the math using the RC time constant.
As for "estimating" the ESR, I feed a 1 Vpp 100/200kHz square wave to the capacitor through an RG58 coax while measuring (through a regular oscilloscope probe) the residual Vpp of the square wave at the cap's terminals. Then I use the residual Vpp to calculate the resistance by voltage divider: R= "residual Vpp" x "signal generator impedance" / (Input Vpp - residual Vpp)
On smaller caps, I've tested this method against the readings I get from my ESR meter, and I must say it works pretty well.
I there anything else I should do or change to have a better view of the state of healt of the capacitors I'm going to test?
Is it safe to consider "good" an old electrolitic capacitor if the above parameters are within specs?