MAT esr meter

It sure is easier to view the whole catalog. Cool catalog.

greg

Not tried that one, but I have recently bought the Bob Parker/Dick Smith Electronics K7214 ESR meter kit, once assembled it worked first time and does everything that's advertised.

Ray L. Volts wrote: > Anybody tried this one? Just wondered how it stacks up against the popular > testers. >

I bought one a couple of weeks ago because it was so cheap ($58 total). We have a Capacitor Wizard at work and I was curious about the comparison. They both uses a low amplitude sine for test.

Wizard: 100 kHz 20 mV P-P

Mat: 66kHz 40 mV P-P

The Capacitor Wizard 'calibration' is very good meaning a 7.5 ohm resistor reads 7+ on the meter. Same for 15 and 22 ohm. The Mat meter is off by a factor of almost 2 with resistors. But, using the 2 meters on bad capacitors gives the same meter deflection of the meter meaning you will find bad caps reliably. The only 'bad' thing about the Mat is no beeper. For that reason I opened it up to see if a 'beep' could be added. While looking at the 6 penlight battery holder, I found it to be

At less than 1/3 the price of a Wizard, I give it a thumbs up.

GG

On 7 Jul 2006 12:49:33 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com put finger to keyboard and composed:

FWIW, a 1uF cap will have an impedance of 2.4 ohms at 66kHz and 1.6 ohms at 100kHz. AFAICS, Bob Parker's ESR meter should show 8 ohms for a perfect 1uF cap (it actually shows less than this). Here is my reasoning:

I can't understand this. What happens if you take a "perfect" capacitor, say a 1uF film type, and connect a low valued resistor in series with it?

- Franc Zabkar

I bought one of these Chinese made ESR meters a year or so ago to compare it to the Dick Smith kit that we've been selling for five years. The MAT meter is OK, but I didn't like the size (largish) compared to the DS kit, also I didn't like the looks or feel of the unit. My staff has the option of using the DS, MAT or an old Daetron (Canadian made) Capacitor tester and the MAT is never used, the DS is most often, with the Deatron used when we want to know the value of a cap that the markings have rubbed off.

We might be prejudiced towards the DS kit (Bob IS a friend after all), but the DS kit is small, fits on the limited space on a workbench or toolkit and just works day in/day out. Pop a new battery in every year or two and we are still using the first one we bought to test it out five years ago...durable!

John :-#)#

Thanks John. For the benefit of readers, I think John means that he's still using the first meter, not the first battery. ;-)

Bob

I also bought one to add to our ESR comparison. It is a piece of crap, IMHO. It failed immediately reporting bad battery even though they were new. I replaced the batteries with another set, just in case, same result. The battery clip material is very cheesy and not springy enough to make good contact.

It is still sitting there waiting for me to complete the comparison using a bench supply in place of the batteries. I am just not very interested in it.

John ESR comparison at

The Anatek chart list at the bottom that Dick Smith kit was discontinued

What that means is ANATEK discontinued carrying the DS kit in 2004 - we still sell them here in North America (Canada).

John :-#)#

Thanks for the input all. Looks like this might be one to avoid.