| Products > Test Equipment |
| DIY Clip Lead Adapter (TL-21) for DE-5000 LCR? |
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| NT0Z:
Hi, gang, I just opened my DE-5000 and turned it on. So far, so good. It came with the SMD tweezers, two "guard wires" with banana plugs, but no TL-21 clip lead module. I think I knew this when I bought it on sale 1-2 years ago from a seller in Japan. :) I was delayed in the unboxing by flood recovery and two surgeries. Life happens when you're not test equipping. Anyhoo, I'm wondering if I can make a clip lead adapter from coax (or shielded wire) and banana plugs until I find a TL-21 that's somewhat reasonably priced? I see that the blade sockets and the banana plug sockets are connected. I assume that the guard socket would connect to the test clip shield cable and that each remaining plug socket would connect to its own gator clip? Or maybe each clip gets its own short length of shielded lead wire with shield to guard and test point to test clip? I did measure a few caps by using the long guard plugs/clips with the test sockets, calibrating out the 3 pF or so lead capacitance from the long bundle of test wires. Seemed to work on anything but a 2 pF mica cap. At present I'm not overly concerned with the many discussions of whether this meter suxx or not, etc. It's the tool I have, and at present, the tool I need to use. :) I have a separate ESR meter and a separate low/high voltage cap leakage measuring device. I am not a rocket surgeon with most test gear, but I'm working on it. As always, your help is appreciated, --NT0Z |
| TomKatt:
There's a few threads on the TL-21 adapter here on the forums... Have you seen this one? |
| mawyatt:
Believe the banana sockets on the DE-5000 are a split type, meaning that each banana socket has two connections, not the usual one. Awhile back we looked for the split male banana plug but couldn't find any, and just ordered the TL-21 ~$20 and modified it for a use with external fixtures such as this one for SMD devices. Also got another TL-21 and modified it for the Kelvin Clip use, we just wired the Kelvin Clips directly into the TL-21. BTW the DE-5000 we have has proven to be quite good, with excellent repeatability and agreement with our lab LCR Meters (IM3536 & TH2830) with a proper Open/Short Cal. Also a note we tried to use a custom fixture we created for our lab meters to allow a DC bias to be introduced (valuable with hi-density ceramic caps and electrolytics), however the DE-5000 evidently requires a DC path for the Short Cal procedure and would not achieve Cal with the DC Bias custom fixture since this includes large Film series Capacitors in the Hcur and Hpot lines. Best, |
| TimFox:
I think the female banana connectors on the front panel of the DE-5000 are "normal" (not split). They come after the female "blade" connectors that are split in order to interface with the two-sided PCB male connectors in the small box for the TL-21 and other leads. When nothing is inserted, the two blades in the female contact each other across the gap to connect the bananas. A similar idea is used in the "Digibridge" series, originated by General Radio and now sold by IET: long slots allow Kelvin-wired component clips to slide and match the component length. Like others here, I have taken a TL-21 and re-wired from the small box to other connector types, retaining the four-wire connections as required. |
| mawyatt:
The female banana connectors on our DE-5000 are definitely "split" with two separate electrical "half-pipe" contacts on each side (you can see this by looking down the banana "barrel" on the DE-5000. There also are separate contacts on the PCB, two for each banana. The "blade" connectors would require separation with a blank insert to use the 4-wire setup with the split contact banana connectors, so we just modified the TL-21s as mentioned. Best, |
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