ESR meter.. Where to buy what to get.

Whats your opinion on where to get the best deal on a ESR meter?

- Mike

Reply to
Michael Kennedy
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See a comparison of some popular models at

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John AnaTek Corp

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Reply to
John Bachman

Boy, this one pops up regularly !

I'm still advocating the Dick Smith one, designed by Bob Parker of Australia, who pops up on here regularly. It's generally known by the name " Genie ". It's available virtually worldwide, in kit form or ready built, at a VERY reasonable price. It has a digital display, auto zero, auto off, is uP controlled, has a table of typical values to be expected, legended on the front, auto ranging, large clear 7 seg LEDs for the readout, and is quick, easy and unambiguous to use. I have been using mine almost daily in a hostile commercial workshop environment for about 3 years now, and it has never let me down. It paid for itself in saved time, in the first week.

There are many available, but few that cost so little, but do the job so well. I would recommend this meter, unreservedly.

See

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for a review, and comparison with the analogue display " Wizard "

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

I have a Peak Atlas ESR 60

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that I acquired through Anatek
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It is small, simple to use and has worked well for me. Just connect the leads, press test, wait a few seconds and read capacitance and ESR.

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James T. White
Reply to
James T. White

What are peoples thoughts on the sencore LC102?

Thanks.

Reply to
dasbrow

The Capacitor Wizard is the nicest one out there .

Reply to
Ken G.

The Bob Parker one (from Dick Smith) is good. I have one and I like it.

Chris

Reply to
Chris Jones

I'll second the Bob Parker meter. I own one and its great.

Wayne

Reply to
Wayne

There's also the great satisfaction of building your own test gear. Makes me think I should be able to use it properly. ;-)

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*According to my calculations, the problem doesn't exist.

    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
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Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Thanks to everyone for all the nice words about the Dick Smith meter. Your cheques/checks are in the mail. ;-)

Regards Bob

Reply to
Bob Parker

In your opinion. A digital ESR meter is needed on some capacitors where the exact ESR has to fall into a certain range. I stopped by local TV repair shop a while back after meeting the owner. I took my DSE ESR meter along. They had four different analog ESR meters, including the Capacitor Wizard, but after trying the DSE meter they ordered two of them.

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Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

In my opinion, it simply is a question of waiting for the digits to settle down or to read the analog meter of that old Cap Wizard quickly and directly.

For general service work, one finds that 3 % accuracy of the full log scale is of little consequences with today's electrolytes and so the Cap Wizard wins again by speed alone. :-)

Reply to
Do Little2

I don't get where this speed thing comes from. I've seen people mention it before. You don't have to wait for anything with the DSE Genie. It reads "

00 ". You stick it across a cap, and before you can switch your eyes from the cap to the display, it's reading " .80 " or whatever. No speed issue. No ambiguity. No waiting for lights or needles to settle. No waiting for digits to settle. Point eight ohms. Period.

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

That speed thing came from the not so far away past, when some people starting to say "it has to be digital, we don't want analog meters." Of course, at that time (end 1970's ?) they had lots of time to mention that while patiently waiting for the slow update/ADC on their digital meter displays.

That is great! And how does it read the ESR of a bad cap. during temperature changes? Can you read it as nice, easy and fast as on an analog meter or does it leave you guessing during ESR changes?

Reply to
Do Little2

In three years of using a DSE Genie, mostly daily, for professional repair work, I've never found

" Reading the ESR of a bad cap during temperature changes "

to be an issue. Every electrolytic cap that I've ever found to be faulty as a result of bad ESR, is at its worst when it's cold. Many switch mode power supplies will fail to start from cold, due to a cap with a poor ESR, which is readily and quickly found with an ESR meter, but will start if the suspect cap is heated first. Likewise, heavy hash on a supply rail due to a high ESR filter cap, is always at its worst when the supply is cold. Even if ESR change with temperature was relevant to locating a bad cap, a change from 25 ohms to 10 ohms still represents a bad cap whether you take the hot or cold reading. I suppose at a pinch, you could use the change of reading with temperature to 'predict' caps on their way to failure, but in 20 years of dealing with switch mode power supplies, which is where the majority of poor ESR issues come up, I've never found this sort of predictive failure trend checking, to be required.

As far as your reasons for bringing up the speed issue goes, it seems to me that in electronic terms, 25 years ago is most certainly not the

" not so far away past "

It is actually a lifetime ago, and of no relevance whatsoever to this discussion. Whilst back then, digital meters were slow, for the reasons that you have stated, this is not the case now, and hasn't been for the last 10 years at least. I would restate that the digital read, calculate and display function of the DSE meter is at least as quick as the time it takes for an analogue meter to climb and settle, and probably actually quicker - and without any potential reading ambiguity that is inherently associated with analogue displays.

Don't get me wrong, though. I have nothing at all against analogue meters. I have a good old AVO 8 Mk IV on my bench, which is used for fault finding every day, and I love it to bits. I was originally issued with it as an apprentice, 35 or more years ago, and I would not part with it for the world.

It would be interesting to see what others have to say about their experiences with analogue versus digital ESR meters, and whether they find capacitor temperature to be a significant factor in their daily use.

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

Sorry to jump in late to this party: Does anyone have an EVB ESR Meter? Any comments pro or con? TIA, Dave

Reply to
Dave

"cough" We've been selling the Dick Smith ESR meter kit K-7214 MK II (great design by Bob Parker!) for about six years now... great little kit, and now we are including (at no extra cost) a MOV to put across the input jacks. You see I think so highly of this kit that I just hate to hear the odd story of someone blowing one up by putting it across either a live circuit or a cap charged over 50V that I felt I had to do something...

Bearing in mind that I still want to be able to check the ESR of batteries (great way to tell if your lead acid or rechargable battery is getting too old) and thus the two heavy diodes back to back would stop that. So I hunted around for a suitable surge protection device and found one in a Panasonic MOV 26V @ 250A.

I then took our shop DS ESR meter and after adding the MOV charged up my old B&K HV current limited power supply to its maximum - 350VDC @

20MA. Then I nailed the ESR kit with this about ten times - drew a nice spark a few times. The kit STILL works fine...

Oh, the MOV costs only $0.30 @ Digi-Key, hence my adding it for free.

John :-#)#

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Reply to
John Robertson

At one time I had both the Capacitor Wizard and the CapAnalyzer88a. Used them both for a while. I ended up _giving_ away the Capacitor Wizard because I didn't like it.

I kept the CapAnalyzer88a and use it just about every day on video arcade game monitors and switching power supplies.

Reply to
Ken Layton

Just for your info, the DSE ESR meter does 4 complete display updates per second. It has the potential to update considerably faster than that, but I deliberately slowed it down to that rate so that the user could read it easily.

Bob

Reply to
Bob Parker

Thanks for the info. According to some users that posts here the DSE ESR meter is indeed a very good product!

I probably belong to a small minority that occasionally like to see a cap. ESR behavior during temperature changes.

Even in 2006 the best way to measure those ESR changes is with an analog readout. However, I would be gladly corrected if varying ESR changes could be properly read with your digital ESR meter.

Reply to
Do Little2

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