Sam Goldwasser wrote:

Let's have a show of hands.... How many really find a curve tracer to be
a piece of test equipment you use regularly and would dearly miss if you
didn't have one.

I use my TEK 576 a lot.
Good for quick charging batteries.
Good for finding shorted caps. All you have to
do is remove the remaining leads and dig the cap
body out of the ceiling.
Good for burning shorts out of circuit boards.
If that fails, use it in 4-terminal mode to find the short.
You can look at a board node and see the resistances and the junctions
on one display.
Makes a nice 1500v breakdown/leakage test supply

Oh yeah, can also be used to look at transistor curves.
I frequently find power transistors that have been stressed
and have funny looking curves. For those in a variable environment,
like TEK TM500 mainframes, it's best to replace 'em before they blow
up your favorite plugin.

Zeners with soft breakdown curves.
Figuring out what you have in that bag of parts marked 2-456.
Selecting transistors for avalanche breakdown pulsers.
Matching transistors.
Testing phototransistors.
Testing tunnel diodes.

Sure, you can get by without one. But when you need it for that
elusive problem, it's very useful.

I'd use it a lot more if it weren't so BIG. It's down under the bench
and I have to sit on the floor to use it.
mike




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