I would appreciate your opinions about the following device:
"Smart Tweezers LCR RCL RLC Meter Digital MultiMeter SMD"
I found on eBay. Looks like an interesting concept but is it as good as the seller tells?
Without a link, to look and evaluate???? Forgeddit!
good as
Check out this
Looks like you could build one for about $50. With a little immagination you could even mount a tweezer on the front end.
-- Glenn Ashmore
I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack there of) at:
1) For the size, Priority Mail Flat Rate is $3.85; the envelope could be distorted more by adding padding. As long as one can fit something in that envelope and seal it, there is no limit to the weight. Theoretically, one could ship about 42 pounds of pure osmimum (the most dense element known). 2) ?Five? digits? Forget it. a) Impossible for capacitors and impractical as the best accuracy one could possibly find in an SMD capacitor might be 5%. Stray capacitance around the probe leads can add anything from 0.2pF to 5-10pF. The PCB, the PCB traces, and all parts in parallel with the capacitor to be ?measured? can add another 2-20pF on strays alone. b) Impossible for non-PCB resistors; maybe 3 digits for the low values as the probe is *not* kelvin - and maybe 4 digits for higher values to a few megs. If the resistors are on a PCB, then there are too many parts that can be in parallel, and the reading can me orders of magnitude off. c) Inductors: maybe 2 digits at best in a PCB environment. The stray capacitances mentioned previously can royally mess up readings. 3) Parts sorting - Possible; 3 digits at most. ** Now i see their specs; the best is 1%, which absolutely KILLs 5 digits and underscores my 3 digit statement above. I see the hoopla concerning Ac waveforms, but one must note that there is *no* specification concerning AC!
Good curiosity item, not too good (especially at the price) for debugging an assembled PCB as most failures would be in the ICs after useage.
The same item is $323.00+$0.00 instead of $254.95+$16.00 here: [
Or you can simply buy a set of BK Precisi>
When posting ebay URLs, do it like this:
You are applying US shipping rates to a Canadian seller.
$10 is typical shipping and handling for an eBay seller. The person doing the shipping doesn't work for nothing, packing material costs a bit, etc. $16 for the first one and $5 for the second isn't out of line. By comparison, Contact East has these shipping rates for the same product at the same price:
There are other problems with the spec:
"DC Voltage: 0 to 800 mV (Up to 8V with optional slide switch manual setting)"
That's a quite low voltage. They don't give maximums (another warning sign); will a cap charged to 5V or 12V kill it? I also wonder about the claimed 1uH-1H 10pF-900mF ranges.
There has been some online speculation based on zooming in on the JPEG of the board that this item uses and AD9833 / CMOS switch to make quadrature phase measurements. If you get one, please open it up and post all of the part numbers. With that info, any of the sci.electronics.design regulars can tell you the real performance specs.
-- Guy Macon http://www.guymacon.com/"> http://www.guymacon.com/
I read in sci.electronics.design that Gerhard wrote (in ) about 'Opinions about Smart Tweezers Handheld RCL Meter', on Sun, 10 Apr 2005:
That's good...
..... but that would make me war-y.
-- Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. There are two sides to every question, except \'What is a Moebius strip?\' http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk
I bought one. It is a nice peace of equipment, except for the jog dial button. Left and right movement are ok, but when pressing it the result is completely unpredictable. Therefore it is impossible to set up the instrument. And when you eventually get back to the measurement mode, you don't know how it is set up. I tried to contact the manufacturer, but got no response until now.
Best regards,
Gerhard
I bought one. It is a nice peace of equipment, except for the jog dial button. Left and right movement are ok, but when pressing it the result is completely unpredictable. Therefore it is impossible to set up the instrument. And when you eventually get back to the measurement mode, you don't know how it is set up. I tried to contact the manufacturer, but got no response until now.
Best regards,
Gerhard
I bought one. It is a nice peace of equipment, except for the jog dial button. Left and right movement are ok, but when pressing it the result is completely unpredictable. Therefore it is impossible to set up the instrument. And when you eventually get back to the measurement mode, you don't know how it is set up. I tried to contact the manufacturer, but got no response until now.
Best regards,
Gerhard
No better than 5%? Then where did all the 1% 100pf SMD caps come from I used in Salen Key filters at Microdyne? The design is about eight years old and they were off the shelf then. I used a set of test tweezers with one of our digital capacitance meters and could not only zero out the probe, but read the caps properly.
-- Former professional electron wrangler. Michael A. Terrell Central Florida
Another impossible to read web page Dark green on a black background? Are they crazy?
-- Former professional electron wrangler. Michael A. Terrell Central Florida
Really? I get a medium green on a dark background, and it reads rather easily. Check your brightness and contrast - they sound misadjusted.
dPearce Consulting
Its as bright as I can get it without retrace lines.
-- Former professional electron wrangler. Michael A. Terrell Central Florida
I bought one too.
I agree with the previous owner that the jog dial is a bit confusing but I think I did manage to figure it out and the unit seems fine for identifying all those SMDs laying around under the stereomicroscope that would otherwise get tossed because its too much trouble to figure out what they are. And that's even with a vector network analyzer and benchtop DMM handy...
The Voltage/Plot mode is probably not of any real use. It's also a pain to have to mess with the slide switch to get to it. If I'm doing something in-circuit I'll use a benchtop DMM anyway. However the auto-range auto-select does seem to do a reasonable job at identify both the type and value of the component. Having it all in a tweezer is actually fairly useful. The alternative is to try to get a part to hold still while you get two probes from a meter on it.
The Tweezers are not entirely useless on installed components, but of course one has to know hwat the circuit is to know how to interperet the results. I think their forte is loose SMDs.
So, all in all, my assessment is that it is a little pricey when you consider the functionality apart from the integration, and perhaps a little bit so, even then, but that it does prove to be a useful tool. I've only used mine a modest amount so far but don't regret buying it.
Glenn
That Mondo Technology Super Probe is a far better instrument for the money, and ther is no hype (no 5 digit display for a 3 digit device).
Must have been specialty parts at a specialty price. Ordinary capacitors run from 5% to 20%, and the few 2% caps are wound plastics. I dare say that the only SMD caps are ceramics, meaning that the accuracy is limited by the construction and physics of construction. Green ceramic caps change size and shape when fired; cannot get around that. Now, one *could* test to a tight spec; bin the passes for hi $ and the failures for regular sales. BTW, do you know the temp curves for X5R, Y5V, etc???
have you seen the Peak Electronics LCR tester:
They have other nice small test equipment and good prices too...
Mike
Or you can simply buy a set of BK Precision TL 8 Tweezer Test Leads for $25. [
"Glenn" wrote
Or you can simply buy a set of BK Precision TL 8 Tweezer Test Leads for $25. [
Yes, I do know the differnt curves. Not everyone builds $2 radios or cheap consumer trinkets. The ones that don't need real parts instead of the floor sweepings.
Its been almost four years, but I believe they were under a nickle each because I got them by the hundred from the stock room and I only did that on 5 cent and under parts. We used a lot of precision parts including .1% resistors. The radios were $8,000 each and custom built.
We used a lot of microwave ceramic SMD chips that had to be high precision to reduce test and alignment time.
Take a look at:
-- Former professional electron wrangler. Michael A. Terrell Central Florida
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