How about a Capacitance Meter?

[Kiriakos GR]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

Here is a link of someone who did an evaluation of one of those economic solutions, it failed to perform as it should.
Then he spent more so to get a better one (search his blog topics) .

http://www.pa4tim.nl/?p=3775

[smason]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

Here is a link of someone who did an evaluation of one of those economic solutions, it failed to perform as it should.
Then he spent more so to get a better one (search his blog topics) .

http://www.pa4tim.nl/?p=3775

Again, what website are we at? Badcaps.net.
What do we do here? Repair consumer electronics devices.
Motherboards, Monitors, TVs etc.
Why do *we* need these high precision high accuracy high priced instruments?

[budm]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

Let's see, I pull the cap off the board, the ESR meter shows 10 Ohms, capacitance is still within 20%, the replacement PANASONIC CAPS show 0.1 Ohms, hmm, is the cap from the board bad. Put in the PANASONIC CAP in, the board is functioning again, what else do I need to know? I am sure the Chinese will put in the best quality caps in their products.

[Kiriakos GR]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

Again, what website are we at? Badcaps.net.
What do we do here? Repair consumer electronics devices.
Motherboards, Monitors, TVs etc.
Why do *we* need these high precision high accuracy high priced instruments?

Replace the word high on the above text line with the one entry level for professional use.
The high ones is something that I can not touch either. (1,300 - 4,000$)

The rules in this game about selection of gear are not set by me, if the industry create caps which need an 100,000 counts LCR with 0.0010 precision, you will have to get one so to stay in the game.

By making repairs you accept the obligation to follow closely the technology regarding the marketed parts, and the one which probably come out.

One similar rough example about changes and upgrades is the SMD (SMT) = spending on Tweezers, microscopes, magnifying glasses, hot air guns, and other gadgets.

Just about to open holes in the wall I have an Hitachi power drill of 1000$ of value, for 18 years never been serviced, and it has pay out it cost about 40 times in my hands.

It would possibly sound as discouraging the information that one new fully equipped repairs lab it can cost between 15,000 to 30,000$.
But imagine that the dentists need to pay a such amount of cash for getting a single chair.

If some one is capable to pull a tooth with pliers, it does not translate that he is definably a Doctor.

And as last I would say that as long your customers does not demand a written warranty from your end about your repairs ( Long term ones), you may patch an electronic circuit to operate for few more months, but this it does not called as professional work.

When your own reliability and your good name as repair man is 100% connected with the quality of your tools, you must be a wacko to cut corners on them.

Yes, many people are less passionate about such matters, even if they understand at 100% my sayings, they hunt the quick cash at the lowest cost, I do not blame them, but the ones who acted like that in the past, they was rejected by their customers, and today they do an other profession than electronic repairs.

[budm]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

"And as last I would say that as long your customers does not demand a written warranty from your end about your repairs ( Long term ones), you may patch an electronic circuit to operate for few more months, but this it does not called as professional work."
That is funny since the Big manufacturers like SAMSUNG, VIZIO, LG, Apple, and such use lousy caps in their products that fail after the warranty runs out and people like many of us here install much better caps in place and with many years of return customers that bring back other products to us to be repaired, I guess we must be doing some lousy works by not using the same lousy caps and parts the the OEMs were using in the first place. Manufacturers are the one that do not care about quality of the finished products, if they do many people will not be doing repair.
Manufacturers are the one that want to make the circuit to operate for few more months just enough to get the customer money. You can have million dollars tools does not make you good technicians.
Do you really think the manufacturers really follow "By making repairs you accept the obligation to follow closely the technology regarding the marketed parts, and the one which probably come out." when they repair the units under warranty, they will still put in the lousy parts that the OEM's use, that way when the same parts fail again, the unit will no longer in warranty.
So who is the one that is looking for quick money?

"Yes, many people are less passionate about such matters, even if they understand at 100% my sayings, they hunt the quick cash at the lowest cost, I do not blame them, but the ones who acted like that in the past, they was rejected by their customers, and today they do an other profession than electronic repairs." You seems to think that because lots of many people do not spend big money on test equipment means we are just hunting for quick cash, that is such an ignorant statement. Happy customers are very important to me and I do the repair the right way so they will keep coming back to give us more work, word of mouth can make or break your business. ESR meter, how long does it take to take out the old caps, analyze it, etc. instead of installing new good caps in place that will last longer than the original, so you really do not need to have the ESR meter. The best tool you can ever have is COMMON SENSE AND LOGICAL SENSE when it comes to troubleshooting, million dollars equipment will be useless since you do not even know where to start.
One thing that is very clear to me is that, these multi-billion dollars companies with millions of dollars in test equipment in hands still using lousy caps that fail, you would think they will analyze and QC the parts first with their expensive equipment.

[Kiriakos GR]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

You can have million dollars tools does not make you good technicians.

Basically the knowledgeable ones is the ones who can not work with the cheap tools.
How in earth you will inspect or check the quality of newly low-ESR caps with a meter which does not have the proper resolution and accuracy ?

Do you really think the manufacturers really follow "By making repairs you accept the obligation to follow closely the technology regarding the marketed parts, and the one which probably come out." when they repair the units under warranty, they will still put in the lousy parts that the OEM's use, that way when the same parts fail again, the unit will no longer in warranty.
So who is the one that is looking for quick money?

This is a complex subject, but the answer is simple, its all about the product category. It makes more sense in such conversations to set from the beginning the subject.. examples: TV sets / Mobile phone / computers .. other.. but we can not put in the same basket everything.

"Yes, many people are less passionate about such matters, even if they understand at 100% my sayings, they hunt the quick cash at the lowest cost, I do not blame them, but the ones who acted like that in the past, they was rejected by their customers, and today they do an other profession than electronic repairs." You seems to think that because lots of many people do not spend big money on test equipment means we are just hunting for quick cash, that is such an ignorant statement.

When the products for home use ( By using your words above as concept) comes with a maximum warranty time of 1-2 years, and the seriously made T&M electronics they come with 5-7 Years warranty due their highest quality of electronic parts, do you think that some one will pass this to you as gift ?

By the way are you familiar with the differences of electronics used in Military electronics and their specifications ? or better their pricing ?

Happy customers are very important to me and I do the repair the right way so they will keep coming back to give us more work, word of mouth can make or break your business.

The word ' customer ' it is very generic, there is people who use their lawyers more often than others so to demand a compensation if you destroy their property that came for a repair.
And in my case as industrial electrician, in case of an error they will happily chop out my head and destroy my life if I cause even a single unjustified damage in anything.
The positive side is that those fellows are paying well if you are mistake-less and capable to find solutions in difficult problems.

It is great that you recognize the value of the word of mouth, which is a positive feedback that every serious business man hopes for.
In my case " they call me as artist " when I deliver any sort of work, the result usually are even better than what they had, and this translates that you respect their property even in a higher degree than them.

The bottom line is that you must be capable to deliver double value in anything you do, so become highly appreciated and get even more customers.
The life is a war, if you fight with bows and arrows you will never win.

[budm]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

"And in my case as industrial electrician," do you have curve tracer to test the Transistor and MOSFET, SCR, TRIAC used for power control system, VFD motor control, do you QC those parts before installing them? If you use your meter to test the power semicoductor and find that it has short A to K, or S to D, do you think it really matter if that Ohm meter that can read 0 Ohm dead short is $100 meter or $1000 meter with 4 decimal point resolution. Do you do any QC on your spare parts you have and verify that they are not faked parts? Do you have ALL the specifaction of ALL the parts you have so you can tell if they are in spec? Do you send out your testing equipment to be calibrated on regular basic? If you deal with good customers, military, gonerment contract, I am sure you will know what you have to do.

I do not repair mnoitors and TV for living, so if you think I use cheap stuff to rip people off, well, you know nothing.

"Basically the knowledgeable ones is the ones who can not work with the cheap tools.
How in earth you will inspect or check the quality of newly low-ESR caps with a meter which does not have the proper resolution and accuracy ?"
" This is a complex subject, but the answer is simple, its all about the product category. It makes more sense in such conversations to set from the beginning the subject.. examples: TV sets / Mobile phone / computers .. other.. but we can not put in the same basket everything."
What do you think bad cap people are working on, rocket to the moon? So why is it bad job when you can use the meter with 2 decimal to tell me that the cap has 10 Ohms of ESR and the unit is not working, then I put in more expensive caps than the one that OEM uses is bad for the customer and making quick money, that is very insulting comment. What meter do you need to tell you that you have dead short Diode, the one with 2 decimal point or have to be the one with 4 decimal points with 0.01%?

"By the way are you familiar with the differences of electronics used in Military electronics and their specifications ? or better their pricing ?"
Let me tell you about my back ground, 10 years at FAIRCHILD SEMI CONDUCTOR repair, maintain, calibrated (do you even have Government certified Cal lab?), installation miliions dollars equipment for making semiconductor device, high vacuum system, precision electro-mechanical equipment, and yes I do work with the Governmnet rep that station in our plant, each Diode and Transistors tested and assign serial number and gone through so many test for before that are installed into military equipmemt, one simple Diode goes for more than $10 a piece. So do you think I am qualify to install new caps that are verify that it is bad.
Do I need 4 decimal point resolution to tell me that it is bad. By the way, If I do not do proper job dealing with deadly gas and very very very high voltage on those semi conductor equipment, many people can die, so I take my jobe very seriously more than you know. And yes, the CUSTOMER in this case is the US Government including NASA. I still remember well that one of the Space Shuttle launch was cancled due to failed power supply caused by failed Diode from our plant! Even we had run all kind of tests on all the Didoe before sending out, some still failed in the field.

5 year at Agilent Technology in Santa Rosa which is only 1/2 hour from where I live, so I know things or two how we make test equipment, notes: I will not say anything bad about their equipment (lawyer may be watching) on the stuff you own if you only know. Quality has been going down hill since a lot of productions has been moving off shore.

10 years at product research and development, 2 years at Advanced Fiber comunication.
So I basically worked in many field of products.

17 Years in present job designing comsumer electronics.

I do not not have businesss so you cannot try to claim that I am looking for quick money, I did a lot of consumer electronics repair during school tp pay tution, now I do volunteer works one day a week fixing just anything that is plugged into the outlets, and yes, repair has to be done right if some one get injured or killed due to poor repair works.

"When the products for home use ( By using your words above as concept) comes with a maximum warranty time of 1-2 years, and the seriously made T&M electronics they come with 5-7 Years warranty due their highest quality of electronic parts, do you think that some one will pass this to you as gift ?" I wish that is true with $80,000 Scope from Tektronics that we are fighting to get it fixed properly under warranty in the last six months. Expensive is not always equal to Quality, you are paying for the name most of the time, especially these days when they move the production off shore with less control in quality due to cost. You can still count on stuff made for military due to in house Governmet sitting and inspect every components/test/calibration in your plant.

So if you want to brag about you profesional tech, plase don't, you still have a long way to go, that is why I do not even put that in my signature, not enough room to put down my knowledge.

So tell me again why I need high reslution ESR meter to tell me that the bad cap I just remove an replace with better quality is not as what you call "deliver double value" when the parts we use are better than the one use by the OEM in first place, or may be we are just looking for quick money. And that is not double the value as you claim.

"In my case " they call me as artist " when I deliver any sort of work, the result usually are even better than what they had, and this translates that you respect their property even in a higher degree than them." Please explain to me on what kind of lab test equipment that you have to verify your double value, did you notify the OEM what is done to it, what safety test did you do to that FIXED products? Try to do that to the military equipment and let me know how that work out. How can you make such a claim? Why not tripple, why not 10 times? How do you measure that, or you just pick the number out off thin air with nothing to back it up. Do you have the actual spec of the equipment you are working on and made ALL the measurement to verify that you have double the value, safety, etc. You will be a rich man if you can tell all those equipment maker that you know more about their equipment that you actually double their value and performance. Did you make your test equipment double their performance? Did you make the 100 Mhz scope into 200 Mhz scope? How can you make such the claim?
You can brag when you have work in more than one field of elecronics and elctromechanical, do lots of field repair with limiting test equipment.

[tom66]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

Budm makes many good points. Another perspective Kiriakos - Let me tell you a little about myself.

I have fixed 47 TVs & monitors (and will be more by this week) over the course of about two years. I usually buy stuff faulty and sell on cheap, as I prefer being able to take my time on repairs. Customers can get picky if you take more than 2 weeks to fix stuff whereas I can be patient and wait for parts or think about the problem in my sleep.

I have only ever had one TV come back to me as faulty again, because I did not re-seat the LVDS connector properly, and after doing that the customer was satisfied and has told me the TV still works to this day.

I use a 1% ESR meter (.01 ohm max res) which cost around £80. All bulged caps I pulled read more than 0.5 ohm. And I've only ever had one bad cap which didn't bulge, but simply failed open circuit.

I use a 0.7%, 6600 count DMM which costs less than £60. Do I care if 5V is 5.001V or 4.999V? No! I just care if it is not 5V+/-5% but 3V or 7V!

I use a basic digital oscilloscope which cost around £320. Before then I used 90's HP Made in USA digital scope and GOULD Made in England analog scope from ex-military store (over 35 years old.) I sold those both to some friends who needed cheap scopes.

All of these were plenty enough for me to conduct all of my repairs.

I have some industry experience working at BitBox Ltd., an electronics design company. Even with a very large turnover and skilled engineers, they still use old Tek TDS monochrome LCD scopes, and basic Fluke 179 DMMs. No high precision gear. Just calibrated every year. They had no issues with that. Why upgrade? They work fine! They considered buying a 3000X Agilent for the engineering lab, but decided it was not necessary.

Now I am at university doing a Masters, and I get to use more high precision equipment in the lab, though frankly, the Agilent scopes make it "too easy" and all of the students are impatiently using AUTOSET instead of learning how to use the scope properly. I wonder how many engineers will leave uni with a 1st Class but no possibility of being hired because they do not understand basic theory elements.



The mark of a good technician is one who can work with what they are given, not one who demands more equipment to do a job. Or perhaps, "An engineer can do for a dollar what any fool can do for two." -- Arthur Wellington

[Kiriakos GR]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

Sorry mates, I am not willing to get in to an endless conversation, about 1000 topics in a single one.

Nor I am willing to share what I do in my work, those valuable details is for my successor when I will make one.

[digge]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

I will probably go with the ESR Micro as soon as they are in stock, unless something else catches my eye in the meantime.

If you want the ESR Micro just send him an email, the out of stock on the English version of the page is usually only outdated information. That's what i did and got it in about a week

[budm]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

"The bottom line is that you must be capable to deliver double value in anything you do, so become highly appreciated and get even more customers."
So you basically do not have anything to back up this statement or if you actually practice, then do not claim that people just looking for quick cash because they do use the same precision equipment as you do, but then again, the OTHER may be using even more precision equipment than you do, then the person can say to you that you are just looking for quick cash?

[Per Hansson]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

I used a $2m Laser machine to modify my chassis.
Does that mean it is now two million times better than if I had done the same work with a $2 file?

For recommendation I'd go with the Russian Micro ESR meter, a friend has it and it's very convenient that it measures both ESR & capacitance at the same time.
That's just my 0.02$ worth...

[Kiriakos GR]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

"The bottom line is that you must be capable to deliver double value in anything you do, so become highly appreciated and get even more customers."
So you basically do not have anything to back up this statement or if you actually practice, then do not claim that people just looking for quick cash because they do use the same precision equipment as you do, but then again, the OTHER may be using even more precision equipment than you do, then the person can say to you that you are just looking for quick cash?

I do not back up any of my statements in conversations with anonymous people.
I do not do that in my everyday life, why to act differently on the internet?
About spending on tools, I describe this action as investment.
Simple as that.

[budm]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

That is what I thought, nothing to back up. Beware of a person that tells you that he just doubled the value of your repaired equipment, RUN AWAY REAL FAST! How can you actually measure that you have doubled the value in the first place? How can you tell that to your customers?
I also do not accuse people of using less precision equipment than what I am using as person that is just looking for quick money and do not care about quality repair. I learn a lot from old timers before me that shows me how they go about designing and fixing things using good old equipment that outlast the new equipment that are being made today. Never stop learning.

[Kiriakos GR]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

Yes I did predict this tornado full of cheap passion, this is why I stepped back.
You look determined to travel to the moon with a wooden wagon, either way I will take a taxi

[tom66]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

Kiriakos, do you have shares in the desk manufacture industry?
Because my head banging against the desk means a new one will be needed later.
Very crafty.

[budm]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

"" they call me as artist " it should be "" they call me a con artist " Just want the fact to back it up. And yet you still keep coming back, have a good trip in your doubled value taxi.

[Kiriakos GR]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

Tom watch out for the Dean if you use the gear of the UNI about serving your little inner business.
About me I am following an successful business model for 25 years, I am not going to step down from my horse today that I am getting some compliments from my people.

I wish you both to live many years and to get a share of this fame by proving your potentials in the years to come.

[budm]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

Ooooo, 25 years!

[tom66]

Re: How about a Capacitance Meter?

Tom watch out for the Dean if you use the gear of the UNI about serving your little inner business.

Piss off. I bought all of my own equipment. Because I can afford to. Because I actually FIX stuff successfully. You appear to leach off companies like Agilent for free samples. I do not need to do this, nor have I.