Does anyone know of a good cheap pico farad capacitor tester that is accurate down to 1 pico?
I have several meters and testers including a Fluke and Brymen that both do capacitors but once I get down to less than 50 pico they start getting erratic readings that don’t settle down and when I test the same cap two or three times I don’t get the same reading. Several of the other testers I have that are specific to capacitors just fail once the value goes below 45 pico and all caps below that just register as bad or unknown.
I have seen several on Amazon like this XC6013L by JUNLIXN for $20.80 that say they are good down to 0.1 pF but am skeptical. Any help would be appreciated.
Hi, What I (myself use) for small value caps down to 1pF or under !!! is a High Precision LC meter that you can purchase in a form of a kit (with or without the enclosure) that works on a battery and is of a decent quality (for the price. It is made by a small company called ASCEL Electronic. They mostly sale on E-Bay but also have their own website: (ascel-electronic.de). The product I’m talking about is: ASCEL AE20204 LC Meter and it can either be purchased already assembled in an enclosure (but at a higher price) or in a form of a kit . I’ve purchased the kit form and without the enclosure as I.ve made my own. It is an instrument that is microcontroller based and you can choose the LCD background color and style (either white characters on blue background or blue characters on a yellow background) at the time of purchase. Here are the specs:
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Measuring Range: Capacitance (C): 0.01pF to ca. 1uF (non-electrolytic) Resolution:
Test Frequency: 15kHz – 750kHz sinus Test Voltage: <2.5Vpp Accuracy: +/- 0.5% reference NOTE: this is a more than decent accuracy !!! Display: 2×16 characters dot-matrix LCD with LED backlight (Yellow or Blue) PC Interface: via RS232 or USB Supply Voltage: 7.5-12V DC, can run on a 9V battery (or a combination of other kinds of battery cells such as 1.5V alkalines, 1.2 V NiMn cells or even 18650 Li-Ion cells. The choice is yours ! |
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Readings that low are not easy to achieve with stability. Keep in mind that when measuring pico caps, if you are using leads you should null out the capacitance of the leads to get a capacitor only reading. I just use my UNI-T meter as Mr. C reviewed and it seems to do okay. Otherwise my fluke 87V in the same manner. I have not needed exact precision though, just to make sure it is in the area.
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