Precision vs plain capacitors???

[Tubejunke]

Originally Posted by NoPegs

"Better" units? It is a wein-bridge. If you use tight tolerance components and construction it will be very accurate, Heathkit or not. Visualize it as an old style weighing-scale (like the statues of Justice are holding.) You're putting a known value in one pan (precision component) and comparing it to your unknown. If your fulcrum is precise, your measurement will also be precise.

Granted, I agree that it isn't good for testing modern-application caps to precision measurements, but for anything from the discrete analog era(which is less likely to complain about exact values anyway), a 0.2% error is nothing to worry about. LCR/ESR meters have their applications, but sometimes you just need to slap 40v onto a cap and observe what happens.

When I said better units, I just meant that there were much higher quality units based on the familiar wein-bridge. A Heathkit is what is is; a kit for someone (anyone) to assemble as far as I know. I don't know if you could buy them pre-assembled or not. There is a guy on a YouTube video who shows capacitor testing on a tester with all the functions mine has, but with about two more voltage selections (mine only goes 450VDC; it went 600VDC which is the rated working voltage a lot of the caps we run into happen to be. Also, his tester had a volt meter and an amp meter to boot to view leakage current.

Sometimes I wish I were into the modern, low voltage stuff where I could just use an LCR/ESR meter and be pretty spot on with what is going on. AND I believe you can test in circuit which would be great although I don't understand how you can do that with parallel components in the picture. That doesn't change I don't think. LOL