EEVblog Electronics Community Forum

Products => Test Equipment => Topic started by: Axtman on March 09, 2014, 06:32:19 pm

Title: Capacitor tester?
Post by: Axtman on March 09, 2014, 06:32:19 pm

I bought a huge bad of "newer" electrolytic capacitors.  Some of the caps were removed from boards and some are unused.  I would like to test these caps before using them.  I don't want to replace a bad cap with a bad cap.  What capacitor tester do you recommend?

Title: Re: Capacitor tester?
Post by: mariush on March 09, 2014, 07:01:05 pm

A good LCR meter with ESR measurement, or a cheaper ESR meter... Atlas ESR70 , ESR-Micro -but only after talking to manufacturer ( user RusMike on badcaps.net forums) - , other more diy esr meters...

A multimeter will only measure capacitance, which is often not good enough to determine if a capacitor is good or not.

Title: Re: Capacitor tester?
Post by: Dave Turner on March 09, 2014, 07:03:38 pm

Do a search on this forum, there's a number of threads about this topic.

Title: Re: Capacitor tester?
Post by: uwezi on March 09, 2014, 08:08:00 pm

The $20 transistor tester which is discussed here as well, will give you at least a go/no-go. It is quite a good universal tool.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/$20-esr-lcr-transistor-npn-pnp-mosfet-meter/ (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/$20-esr-lcr-transistor-npn-pnp-mosfet-meter/)

Title: Re: Capacitor tester?
Post by: PA4TIM on March 09, 2014, 08:18:23 pm

Decent LCR  meter that also measures D.
A DC leakage tester-reformer.  extreme easy to build