Can we talk about the money I wasted on those cheap capacitor testers?

I dropped $40 on a no-name tester from Amazon last month and it read a 50uF cap as 12uF. Ended up swapping three perfectly good boards before I figured it out. How much have you guys lost trusting bad tools?

3 comments

3 Comments

black.oliver24d ago

Respectfully @adam186, voltage rating shouldn't affect capacitance readings on a proper tester.

sanchez.ivan24d ago

Right? Same thing happened to me with a 50v cap. My little multimeter just freaked out and gave me nonsense numbers. Spent way too long checking everything else before I figured it out.

adam18624d ago

And what kind of cap was it? I had a similar problem with a 35v electrolytic where the cheap tester could not handle anything over 25v, so it just gave garbage readings. That kind of inconsistency is the worst because you spend hours chasing ghosts in your circuit.