Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff

Is it possible to destroy components with a capacitance meter?

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niino:

--- Quote from: Siwastaja on July 12, 2020, 06:48:24 am ---You likely didn't kill anything, but the real question is, how do you know it's dead due to the capacitors? Replacing them is far from guaranteed to fix it, the issue can be elsewhere, and likely is.

--- End quote ---
I took one out and it measured way out of spec (capacitance was far too low, I don't have an ESR meter, might want to invest in one), so I suppose the other identical ones in parallel failed in a similar way. I don't own a scope, and since university is currently closed for reasons we all know, I can't use one over there. It's a pretty old device (2005-2006ish) that has been used a lot, so capacitor failure seems very well possible.

According to some googling, most multimeters measure capacitance different from e.g. LCR-meters, not by applying AC, but by charging the capacitor with a defined DC current and measuring the voltage. So the resulting voltage depends on the capacitance. If that's the case with mine, I probably didn't do any damage.

RoGeorge:
Just replace all the electrolytic capacitors.  I don't think the instrument damaged anything.

Capacitors are well known to lose capacitance by electrolyte drying over time, especially those placed near heating components.  Bulged capacitors are the most common failure in electronics since the switching power supplies became ubiquitous, followed closely by BGA soldering issues and failure of power transistors/diodes/ICs.

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