Looking for a ESR meter

[armandine2]

You could make up your own test leads.

[edited - to not mislead!]

 

[nightfire]

Basically you can use the DE5000 with the existing 4mm cables and jacks you already have. The Tweezers are nice, as they use a 4-wire technology and therefore are compensated. But if you do not do much SMD parts, or small resistors, you can omit them.
Same for the TL-21 croco clips- those also use 4-wire technoligy and internat shielding to give precise results, but are not initially needed.

You simply have to keep in mind, that using standard 4mm cables will also introduce some additional resistance and a bit of capacitance to the measuring circuit, and you should use the internal zeroing mechanism of the DE5000 to compensate for this.

[armandine2]

[I'll check if] the 2 banana inputs can give a 4-wire measurement?

edited to "take it apart"

[Shock]

I'd buy 2 of the TL-21 and upgrade them to make good pair of good kelvin clips and tweezers.

I prefer owning a separate LCR meter and having a dedicated ESR meter for messing around in circuit. Wasn't planned on purpose but I've ended up with several of the Bob Parker models. His latest one called the Blue2 goes down to 1 milliohm resolution, mine are the 10 milliohm models.

[robsims]

Ok thank you nightfire

[armandine2]

yes it appears to be split in two

[Shock]

The adapters break out the guard trace wire as well so you can make guarded test leads, this is why I'd go for the TL-21 over the using the sockets. Split pinned sockets are way more trouble and expense to mess with.

This thread here has some ideas, but I'd not go the BNC connector route.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/de-5000-lcr-tl-21-mod/

[robsims]

Basically i want to test capacitance/capacitors, inductance/inductors and resistance/resistors accurately. And besides that i want to know if a capacitor is good or not. That's what i want, nothing more and nothing less

[Doctorandus_P]

The snake word is "accurately".
I'm happy with an accuracy of around 5%, and that is why I did not buy the DER EE 5000. If you buy it though, you're likely to get much better accuracy even if you only use simple wires with banana plugs. If you do this, then do use short wires. Something like 10cm is preferably to half a meter!

For the "high end" meters the test jigs to connect your device under test to the meter itself can easily cost EUR 500 or even more, and that is just for some passive mechanical stuff.

In the link Shock posted there are some good ideas for diy-ing test jigs. I think that Dave also made some EEVBlog video's about test jigs and their properties.
It also has a link to Tindie for a PCB that fits into the slots of another LCR meter, and those PCB's only cost a few EUR. The design is also on github if you have to modify it to fit in the DER EE 5000.

https://github.com/voltlog/kelvin-leads

The other parts such as wires, kelvin clips or SMT tweezers are easily sourced standard parts.

[kripton2035]

esr meters need to be robust device that can withstand mains voltage and up to 400V
this is for the case when you forget to discharge the capacitor you want to measure...
the de5000 is a very good lcr meter, but will die if you do not discharge the capacitor before measuring.
it's quite easy to make one yourself, look at my webpage : http://kripton2035.free.fr/esr-repository.html
for me the easiest and more robust today is the jay_diddy esr meter : http://kripton2035.free.fr/analog%20esr/esr-dmm-adapter-.html

[robsims]

Thank you Doctorandus_P. good info about the length of the wires. Tomorrow i will order a DE5000 from ebay and a breadboard. Think the de5000 is  the best option for now

[mapleLC]

What do these meters really have that an oscilloscope with a function generator won't do?

This reminds me of early in my career when I was programming a lot, there were really low level languages like assembly, then later on what I call "meta programming languages" evolved coupled with products such as Tibco and BizTalk, maybe SAP.  My point is that in between these really useful extremes, a lot of bloat and shitware came into being like JavaScript or early refinements of objectification like C++ that were lets just say CUMBERSOME. 

These 50 dollar type disposable tools smack of this kind of javascript of lab tools.  If someone can enlighten me on what the capabilities are that make this tool indispensable, I would like to hear it.

[Shock]

The standalone ESR meters are designed for determining electrolytic capacitor health, a common indicator being abnormally high ESR. Specifically the ones I showed are suitable for in circuit use as it operates below the junction voltage threshold and robust enough to be exposed to a 50V (or 250V when modified) cap discharging across the inputs. The test frequency is 100 kHz, commonly used to test caps.

They are used more as a comparative tool, to quickly determine if the ESR is double, triple the expected value etc. Doing this without an ESR meter is a lot of messing around and not practical during repair. Daves video shows usage.

Of course bulging is an obvious sign but they don't always bulge and it's particularly useful (along with checking leakage and capacitance) to check if a cap that has been sitting around is still good,  or to check if a donor from a scrap board is worth salvaging.

Edit:
People didn't have access to scopes or function gens in the past and cheap LCR meters didn't do advanced functions like ESR calculations, so making your own ESR meter became popular.

Once you start finding suspect caps with them it's one of the most useful tools you could have. Sure there are many ways to skin a cat, but they are fairly inexpensive to build and for most repairers it's a money making tool.

[armandine2]

ESR is in series with the capacitor, by definition. Yet leakage is through the capacitor - see the YouTubers who have tested their capacitor at working voltages.

[mapleLC]

Post one so we are not guessing

[rsjsouza]

ESR is in series with the capacitor, by definition. Yet leakage is through the capacitor - see the YouTubers who have tested their capacitor at working voltages.

Indeed. Leakage is particularly serious when restoring older audio and test gear operating at tens or hundreds of volts.

Post one so we are not guessing

I posted a few videos where I test the leakage of some "tar bombs" and "paper oil bombs" as well as electrolytics of very high capacitance. All in portuguese, so unfortunately it might not be the most understandable... I am sure there are a few others available.

link 1
link 2

[TimFox]

Technical note:
For a capacitor at a fixed, reasonable frequency, there is a well-defined relation between the equivalent series and parallel resistances, and a related relation between the equivalent series and parallel capacitances.  In both models (at that frequency), the Q values are equal.
However, at DC, the resistance values are unrelated and only the “leakage” (parallel resistance) has physical meaning.

[floobydust]

I've used the Alltronics Anatek Blue ESR/ Bob Parker ESR meter for years, it works very well and puts out up to 50mA test pulses. There are chinese knockoffs of it now on eBay.

Also tried the XJW01 LCR meter from Aliexpress, it's not bad as a copy of the HP bridge (uses AC sine-wave) for test but highest frequency is 7.8kHz and the firmware is a little clunky. The newer, high frequency (STM32+DDS) version is not sold to the West.

Never used a DE5000 and no idea how good it is, no idea of the excitation waveform and current.
chinese electrolytes are very weird, most poor quality test gear will read high capacitance value despite the part failing, having high ESR and leakage current.

[The Electrician]

Never used a DE5000 and no idea how good it is, no idea of the excitation waveform and current.

This was explained in reply #12.

[floobydust]

I see the DE5000 spec is 0.5VRMS and unknown current. I didn't like the 8 missing protection clamps, that's a fail in my books for an LCR meter.
Even if you short and discharge an electrolytic, they come back up a bit due to dielectric absorption.

[Shock]

This is why having both are best. If you are matching, sorting or need accurate performance characteristics use the LCR meter. For repairs or quick checks, a multimeter along with separate ESR meter gets it done.

The DE5000 is fine it's just not designed specifically to be used in circuit. Installing the protection componentry likely results in it either not calibrating, zeroing or losing accuracy. I thought I read somewhere someone was going to try this out a while back. The DE5000 is still a bargain though in my opinion.

You can also run a cheap AVR meter and it's only a few bucks to repair so doesn't matter if you toast it. Or build something like Jay_Diddy_B's ESR adapter which uses protection diodes across the inputs (same as you can mod on the older Bob Parker designs).

Plenty of options.

[mapleLC]

This is why having both are best. If you are matching, sorting or need accurate performance characteristics use the LCR meter. For repairs or quick checks, a multimeter along with separate ESR meter gets it done.

The DE5000 is fine it's just not designed specifically to be used in circuit. Installing the protection componentry likely results in it either not calibrating, zeroing or losing accuracy. I thought I read somewhere someone was going to try this out a while back. The DE5000 is still a bargain in my opinion.

Again, why not an oscilloscope?

[PushUp]

TRX Lab (ex TRX Bench) did the best video series about this topic, also about the "DER EE DE-5000" - roughly 4 hours of packed infos:

#83
ht*****tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivVSq0IiZGo

#154 1-2
ht*****tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2K9j2KGzDY

#155 2-2
ht*****tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0RkxF_yAps

 

Again, why not an oscilloscope?

As long as you have to buy your testgear yourself and also as a beginner, starting with repairing dead things within your household, you need to buy other equipment first, before thinking of purchasing an oscilloscope and a function genearator - and as mentioned above, you only need to know the right direction to estimate the situation of a bad cap, so that a cheap chinese ESR-Meter is the best investment to do, before going any further...

At least that was my approach some years ago, having learned something totally different and having no family member or friend being able to help or give tips in any way...say nothing of having access to use such special testgear...

Cheers! 

[rsjsouza]

This is why having both are best. If you are matching, sorting or need accurate performance characteristics use the LCR meter. For repairs or quick checks, a multimeter along with separate ESR meter gets it done.

The DE5000 is fine it's just not designed specifically to be used in circuit. Installing the protection componentry likely results in it either not calibrating, zeroing or losing accuracy. I thought I read somewhere someone was going to try this out a while back. The DE5000 is still a bargain in my opinion.

Again, why not an oscilloscope?

I pesronally don't really care for the cheap ESR meters as I prefer measuring the dissipation factor instead with the LCR, as it is less dependent on the capacitance itself and is specified by the manufacturers on their datasheets (unless for high ripple caps). However, even the ESR meters have their place, since the convenience factor, as well as cost is unparalleled. After all, it is better to have some idea of the status of a cap than none. Also, a bad oscilloscope bought new can be had for 2~2.5x the price of the DE-5000 in question here.
Regading protection, it is a specialized equipment for specific tasks: my Reed 5001 can withstand 30V on its inputs, thus more than enough for the occasional mishap.

[armandine2]

Post one so we are not guessing

The YouTubers I have in mind are:

 John Ward - he uses his Fluke multi function tester in insulation test mode to check a run / start motor capacitor

and

Bill - Lockdown Electronics - he recreates w2aew's procedure to measure the esr with an oscilloscope and function generator, but goes on to test with an insulation tester (much like above)

[Ed to add #744 IMSAI Guy]