Re: Decent little cap tester...

Clay Cowgill wrote:
>
> Just some more info for any of you expanding your test gear. I was making
> an order from Jameco the other day and saw their "BelMerit Capacitance
> Meter" (#140741) for $59.95... I decided to add it on to the order-- when
> I called in the price was $49.95 (cool).
>
> Anyway, I got it yesterday so I brought it into work with a double-handful
> of caps and did some A/B tests against the Sencore Model LC77
> capacitor/inductor analyzer.
>
> Long story short-- although it only measures capacitance it seems to do it
> very well (esp. compared to the Sencore's $1800 price tag). Accuracy seems
> better on the pF-nF range (more or less exactly the same answers the
> Sencore gave there), drift gets a little more pronounced in the uF range,
> but never more than the tolerance of the caps I tested.
>
> Although it doesn't do all the leakage/ESR/dialectric absorbtion tests that
> the Sencore does it seems to be great for testing if a cap is out of spec
> or identifying the value of something you're not quite sure about.
>
> Good little value for $50.
>
> -Clay
>
> Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager
> _______________________________________________________________________
> /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com
> \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/

Hmm, putting on my shop hat:
Speaking of cap testors, I am carrying the Capacitor Wizard that will
check 1 ufd and up caps in circuit for ESR, and uses a meter movement
for quick readings. The meter gives a relative reading and if
questionable you compare with a known-to-be-good device. I find this
really usefull in checking in-circuit (I did mention it reads in-circuit
didn't I?) in switching supplies, monitors,, etc. It is also handy for
finding shorts in traces, and low resistance shorts. Check it out on the
web page.
Special price for Vectorlist folks...$150US each, regularly $175,
quantity break available too.
Sorry about the add, but I would be happy to ship this to someone for
eval for the group to consider...

John
:-#)#

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