I remember Time Constant theory from my Electronics courses 30 years ago.
I have been reading badcaps for a few days now.
I'm not yet understanding much about ESR yet, but I do understand capacitance.
This might be a really dumb question, but assuming a person had virtually NO money to spend on any new test equipment, for out of circuit capacitor testing, would a series resistor and a stopwatch (and good quality DMM) not be enough to make a "rough" measurement of a capacitor? I mean, using the 5 Time Constant principle?
If the resistor is carefully chosen, and if it's value is measured using a high quality DMM, the RC circuit could be designed to be quite accurate, would it not? example, a relatively long RC circuit Time Constant could be made such that 5 TC's are about 2 or 3 minutes.
, uh, I guess I just realized, this would only be good for DC current measurement and testing the cap using just DC charging current. Does testing capacitors in our computer power supplies require testing at high (relatively) frequencies? I notice many posts here at badcaps talk about 100khz testing.
? sorry if the questions are on the dumb side, just looking for a little guidance. I like finding cheap/free solutions to things....
I have been reading badcaps for a few days now.
I'm not yet understanding much about ESR yet, but I do understand capacitance.
This might be a really dumb question, but assuming a person had virtually NO money to spend on any new test equipment, for out of circuit capacitor testing, would a series resistor and a stopwatch (and good quality DMM) not be enough to make a "rough" measurement of a capacitor? I mean, using the 5 Time Constant principle?
If the resistor is carefully chosen, and if it's value is measured using a high quality DMM, the RC circuit could be designed to be quite accurate, would it not? example, a relatively long RC circuit Time Constant could be made such that 5 TC's are about 2 or 3 minutes.
, uh, I guess I just realized, this would only be good for DC current measurement and testing the cap using just DC charging current. Does testing capacitors in our computer power supplies require testing at high (relatively) frequencies? I notice many posts here at badcaps talk about 100khz testing.
? sorry if the questions are on the dumb side, just looking for a little guidance. I like finding cheap/free solutions to things....
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