ESR meter kit

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Steve Jones

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 4, 2004
Messages
506
Location
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Well, I'm going to bite the bullet tomorrow and buy this kit:

http://www.siliconchip.com.au/cms/A_101187/article.html

I think everyone knows from my previous rants that as a synth tech I just replace old electrolytics on sight in synthesisers, they are a pernicious scourge. I can understand leaving them is some good quality pro audio gear, but I would test them anyway. So instead of being the Electrolytic Soup Nazi I am going all new age and building an ESR meter kit. (I admit a certain influence from the esteemed Joe Malone here :grin: ).

It is certainly cheap enough, and the raves on the net seem good, it even has a bit of a DIY modification following... so time to pony up the dough I guess. I will post a report if anyone's interested.
 
Hey Steve,

I've got an article including schematic for an ESR meter, that I got from here ( I searched quickly and didn't find the thread), but could save you the dough on a kit ( sometimes buying a complete kit is nice tho =) )

I think maybe Jakob posted it originally ( keep me straight here Jakob =) )

ju
 
OK, found it =)


http://www.albany.net/~gwoods/esr_meter/esr_meter_index.html

and here's the thread where Jakob posted his shtuff as well :

http://www.groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=2077

ju
 
Thanks for the links ju, I will compare their circuits with the kit schematics. It is tempting to be lazy and buy the kit :roll: :razz:
 
I have the older one here at work and also at home ....
we bought a few Dick Smith Kits as they had a special on at the time.
Made them all up as one at the same time.

The MKII .. I think .. has a new front screen and a slightly changed eprom.
Better than the first but still essentially the same thing.
 
I like this ESR tester because the PIC controller is very intelligent and the unit has only one button. Press it once turns the unit on. Short the meter leads together and press the button again zeros out the lead resistance. Press it again and the unit turns off. Simple. The chart of volts/uF and standard ESR values means you are never having to dig out any reference charts. The display also starts to flash when it needs a new battery. It could only be better if it could read uF values at the same time.

I have been using the Mk1 for several years and it only took about 2 hours to put it together. Also if trying to find shorts on PCB's it is perfect as a super low ohms meter. Cannot live without it on the work bench:)

Joe

www.jlmaudio.com
 
Steve
get the kit. I've had mine for over a year and next to my multimeter is a fundamental tool of the trade. Like Joe i also use it for tracing low resistance paths. Got a power amp with 6 transistors in parallel and one is shorted? The ESR meter can track it down without having to pull all the transistors out of circuit or lift the emitter resistor to isolate them. I think Dick Smith had the kit on special for $59 recently. It is the best money and time ( sorry Joe it only took me 1.5 hours to build ! ) i've spent for ages.
If you are in the servicing game and work on old gear, it is an essential tool for assesing electos
 
[quote author="Steve Jones"]What do you think of the Mk.1 version Kev?[/quote]

Mk1 was good ... MkII is good/better
Joe and spuib summed up everything in the above.

Buy the kit .... buy two.
 
If anyone cares to look this over, here's a layout of the schematic that Jakob posted. If it looks good, I can provide the track artwork. This is one of my first layouts, so go easy on me :grin:

Theres 3 jumper locations, where I put pads, primarily getting the 4.5 volts to the correct spots.


Regards

ju

http://shinybox.com/diy/esrcheck.jpg
 
Well, I went ahead and built one, it all seems to work, gives the correct readings with the supplied calibration resistors and so on, but I really can't figure how best to use it... what is a bad ESR reading? a few Ohms above the table? Tens of Ohms? the manual says nothing about the kinds of readings to expect for bad caps. I pulled some bad caps out of a Roland synth this morning that had stopped the power supply cold, so I put them across the ESR meter today, and a capacitance meter. The capacitances were correct, but they were bad. I really did not know what to look for on the ESR meter, but replacing the caps fixed the synth.

Is 1 0hm above the table bad? 5 ohms? What precentage of the reading to the table is excessive? The manual has nothing to say about it.

I am guessing that this meter will be really handy as a low ohms circuit tracer, but I think an electrolytic would have to be really bad before this meter would be any use, so it's probably not much use for finding bad caps in the real world. Looks like one of those units that are really useful for something other than it's intended purpose, I can see how it would be great for looking for shorts around PCB's, and I can see myself getting a lot of use from it in that capacity, and from looking around the web it seems that that is pretty much what people are using this kit for.
 
Most of the modern low ESR type caps are usually quarter of the value shown on the chart. The ESR will stay below the value marked even if it is years old if it is good. So for low ESR types I will usually use the figure marked on the panel as the maximum allowable ESR or for normal caps 2 to 4 times the figure marked depending on how critical the cap is. 1ohm and 5ohm is a big change in ESR and I would definitely change it as we are talking 10th & 100th of an ohm here.

Joe
 
Thanks joe, I will have a look at some low ESR caps today, and compare them with some I have taken from a switchmode PSU that I saved up. It is a very clever kit, the designer did a neat job on it. Thanks for the guidelines, I have some really old caps floating around the shop at the moment on some of the gear I am working on, so I will try and get a feel for it.
 

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