LCR Meter Suggestions

preferred.

Was just looking at the Agilent E4980A... it is pretty nice, but not real cheap.

preferred.

Thanks for the suggestion, but at $17K it's out of our budget.

preferred.

The AADE unit is nice, for low-range Ls and Cs. Not for ESR or larger L/C measurement.

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John Larkin Highland Technology Inc

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

preferred.

Industrial means (to me) that it should be drop proof, idiot proof, and as close to indestructable as possible.

I was using a borrowed Mastech MS5308 LRC meter mostly as a capacitor ESR meter. $200 to $250. The Kelvin clips are nice for dealing with low resistance, in circuit measurements. I wouldn't mind buying one, but borrowing is fine for my use.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

preferred.

I think the 720 is close to $2k. I've found that a HP4194 works quiet well if you wind your own magnetics. Meters like the SR720 are too limiting if you do your own magnetics and need to qualify capacitors.

preferred.

We've got an SRS 720 that we use mostly for cap matching.. but also to check coils sometimes. Frequencies are 100, 120, 1k, 10k and 100kHz. $2k in my old catalog.

George H.

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What is your budget? What is your definition of "good"?

SRS has some nice retro-1980s styling ones for a few thousand. SR715/720. They work okay for most purposes.

Or if you feel lucky you can get a real Chinese LCR bridge for a few hundred. Or an LCR meter type thing for a hundred or so.

preferred.

Their Kelvin clips suck big-time unless you're exclusively dealing with 1975 leaded parts with fat leads. The tweezers are better, but still pretty MM for $300.

The bridge itself works fine (but don't get the model wrong or you'll get stupid readings.. don't ask...).

is preferred.

Grin... yup, living on the trailing edge of industry.

But you are correct the input is clunky. I've used a few 'mods' on the input, including the dreaded white proto board.

George H.

The tweezers are better, but

HP4274A. I love mine.

Find one with Option 001 (0-35V DC bias), and the bias controller box. You'll need that if you want to do anything meaningful with Y5V dielectric stuff.

Manuals are still on agilent.com. Take a look.

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"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence  
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preferred.

Thanks to you all for the help. I'll consider your suggestions as I continu e to define requirements for the meter. One requirement is that it be capab le of measuring capacitance in the range from 1 pf to 10 uf, at 10% accurac y. Actually, I'll aim for the greatest accuracy I can get for a cost of aro und $500.

Darol Klawetter

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define requirements for the meter. One requirement is that it be capable of measuring capacitance in the range from 1 pf to 10 uf, at 10% accuracy. Actually, I'll aim for the greatest accuracy I can get for a cost of around $500.

It occurs to me that I almost never measure capacitances above a few hundred pF.

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John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom timing and laser controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer 
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

s preferred.

nue to define requirements for the meter. One requirement is that it be cap able of measuring capacitance in the range from 1 pf to 10 uf, at 10% accur acy. Actually, I'll aim for the greatest accuracy I can get for a cost of a round $500.

Before you spend your hard earned money, you should look at http://aade.c om/. Neil was my lead way back in about ' 65. He is a really sharp engineer. He has a page on some accuracy tests he did on measuring inductors and capacitors with his meter and some other instruments. It llooks as if you can exceed your accuracy requirements for measuring L and C and only spend about $100. It will not get you to

10 ufd. But the web site is worth looking at even if you do not buy anything.

Dan

What I use is an Extech model 380198 LCR meter, which costs about $200.

This is a handheld, but has an endearing advantage - it correctly measures low-Q components.

The typical handheld LCR meter implicitly assumes that it will see only almost ideal components, and can be grossly in error if this assumption is not correct.

I came upon the issue while figuring out how to measure guitar pickups, which are a low-Q inductor (wound with very fine wire, so 10 Kohm in series with a few Henrys measured at 1 KHz is typical), at reasonable price for my guitar pickup maker friends.

The short story is that I built a Maxwell-Wein impedance bridge, which is accurate but slow. But the bridge allowed me to find and validate the accuracy of those few LCR meters that were not flummoxed by a pickup.

The technical difference is that the typical LCR meters measure only the magnitude of impedance and assumed the component is pure when computing the component value, while the Extech and its siblings instead measure the complex impedance, and so can distinguish resistance from reactance, and report both accurately.

Joe Gwinn

Looks like quality may be a problem with Mastech products: See Experience section: "The MS5308 LCR meter sometimes fails to initialise at power on, however on recycling the power once or twice it usually starts."

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Frequency range? 60 Hz, audio, MHz? Device parameters will change significantly across these ranges.

10% is not much. I have a Radio Shack DVM that will do this on its capacitance range. One can trade industrial quality for cheap enough to drop and break occasionally. And just go out and buy another.

I have an LCR analyzer built around an AD5933 evaluation board. I think those were selling for about $75 a few years back. But its home brew.

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Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com 
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And don't ever buy this B model

I had an "A" model which worked perfectly, incircuit and out, I would of recommended it to any one. It got used and never returned back to me. I had my employer get me another one. The "B" version replaces the "A" and I can tell you it is a total re-engineered device that's not even close to the quality of the "A" model.

It's intermitting at times when doing cap measurements and it has a hard time doing in circuit testing. Not only that, you can not use each scale to it's fullest, you have to select a scale that puts the expected value at 50% or more, stated in the manual, otherwise no matter what value you use it always seems to reach up around the 30% scale of min reading, unless of course it is large enough to get into the working area of the scale. I call that bad design work!

I had purchasing send that unit back for another, thinking it was defective. Nothing could be that bad, but the new one came in and it too was the same...

The basic Cap mode in my portable fluke (289) does much better than this unit does for remote cap measurements.

I don't use it for serious work, it's a good thing I do have a more serious unit to use for that.

Just another company and their products showing signs of the time (Greed).

Jamie

I also had a bad experience with a BK Precision 875B, replaced it with the Extech mentioned in another reply.

The BK signal generator was also useless - weird controls, output quite distorted.

Joe Gwinn

I have two B&K things that I really like: one is their 844USB device programmer (actually made by Elnec) and their 4003A function generator.

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John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom timing and laser controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer 
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators