CapAnalyzer / LeakSeeker

[radiance]

Has anyone heard of these products?
The seem quite handy to me but I can be fooled very easely since I'm no expert in this field. The have some kind of "to good to be true" thing about them though....

 

[dramadisease]

that leak detector looks pretty sweet.

 

[Kid Squid]

'allo Chaps,

Radiance - I have an interesting article on designing and building an ESR Meter.
The circuit allows you to measure the equivalent series resistance of an electrolytic capacitor, while in circuit.
If you want a copy - i'll take some pics and host them on image cave.
what the hell - I'll put them on there this afternoon for you.
I had the article off one of the comms tech's in work, about two months ago -
he reckons that his ESR meter rocks :grin:

I haven't had time to build one myself, but I will in time

anyway, ill get on the case - they'll be on this afternoon, and i'll post the link for you.

Regards

Steve :thumb:

 

[Kid Squid]

Here they are :-

http://usera.imagecave.com/KidSquid/

:thumb:

 

[NewYorkDave]

In addition to the article posted above, here's a couple more DIY references.

The original commerical ESR meter product, to the best of my knowledge, was the Creative Labs meter. It's no longer in production, but you can find all the info you need to build your own version here. We have this very same meter where I work, and it's served us well.

As for "short seekers", the principle usually used is simple and lends itself to DIY. Essentially, the idea is to put a fairly large current from a current-limited supply through the shorted bus and read the voltage drop at various points on the buss with a sensitive milli- or micro-volt meter. This is done with a 4-wire "Kelvin" connection rather than the usual 2-wire ohmmeter-type connection. Bob Pease's excellent Troubleshooting Analog Circuits book includes a plan for a simple, effective device. Here's a scan.

(By the way, NO home should be without this book!). :wink:

 

[gyraf]

Here's the one I'm using:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v172/gyraf/ESR-Meter_01.gif
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v172/gyraf/ESR-Meter_02.gif
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v172/gyraf/ESR-Meter_03.gif
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v172/gyraf/ESR-Meter_04.gif
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v172/gyraf/ESR-Meter_05.gif

..it has saved me MANY hours work, finding bad electrolytics...

Jakob E.

 

[chrissugar]

Thank you Jakob
Simple and effective.

chrissugar

 

[radiance]

Thanks Kid & you all.
This is all very interesting stuff.

 

[Rob Flinn]

Kid squid

I`m interested in building the meter from your copied article. The problem is that the resolution of your pictures is not quite good enough to build the unit from. Is there any chance you could up the res a bit ?

 

[rafafredd]

Hey Jakob. I need one of those badly!

Do you have a PCB layout already? Or should I just put one together?

 

[fum]

I added this in another thread, but I worked one up based on Jakobs posted article. Going over it for errors, but here's a rough peek:

http://www.shinybox.com/diy/esrcheck.jpg

ju