"Jamie" t wrote in message
...
Dave wrote:

"Phil Allison" wrote in message
...

"Meat Plow"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEA5MfllPdg

Not a bad little meter for the $$$$. Anyone who does work on consumer
electronics ought to have one or something similar. Removes a lot of
guess work.


** I disagree.

An LCR meter is more useful for design and production than in servicing.

Many low cost DMMs include capacitance ranges that can measure from a few
pF up to 200 or 2000uF.

A dedicated ESR meter handles electros just fine while in circuit - and
lets you test all kinds of cells too, which an LCR meter often cannot.

Any DMM can read the resistance of an inductor or transformer winding.

The only function left is to measure inductors for value.


.... Phil



Wanted to thank *everyone* for the info and encouragement I have received
in this discussion. Bottom line for me, at least for now, is simply
don't test in-circuit (pop one lead and then test after discharging).
Have also found a ton of material on youtube and the net that convinces
me to get a dedicated ESR meter (or possibly build one.) Anyway, thanks
all for a very enlightening discussion.

Take it easy...

Dave


I use a cheap B&K LCR, it does in circuit beautifully.

Jamie



Hey Jamie, thanks for the note. So, how do you perform an in-circuit ESR
test on a suspect cap? Do you bother to discharge it, or do you just let
the circuitry around the cap do that? And how reliable are the numbers you
come up with? I tried to do an in-circuit test today on a cap and thought I
had gotten lucky with my first shot. A 10uF @ 100V cap gave me an ESR
reading of 42.15 in-circuit, but when I popped it out and tested it again it
dropped to 0.12. big difference! Still trying to figure out what I might
have been doing wrong...

Have since discovered a different cap that may actually be the problem. A
..22uF @ 50V cap with an ESR reading of 25+ ohms. Am thinking this component
may be where the vertical hold sync pulse gets lost, as it feeds an
oscillator/mixer transistor which feeds the output transistor of the
vertical hold circuitry. All of this two days after I discovered I had an
ESR meter and didn't know it. shaking head

Dave