Bench Digital Capacitor Measuring

I wouldn’t mind having the GenRad 1689M that Paul uses but if you find them they are pricey. Currently I just use my multimeters, the UniT and my Fluke 87.5

@radtekman The GenRad 1689M is a little to rich for me too!

I guess I am looking maybe around $500.00

I want something better than my DE-5000 Handheld LCR Meter and some of my other cheap stuff.

@larry_n7luf I haven’t looked at them in a while. I just get by with what I have for now, once I have money laying around I can get some more luxury type equipment. As it sits, I am pretty set on equipment for the most part. Just focusing on other projects right now (not electronics). I am curious what others will recommend though.

@radtekman I was trying to check out some Pf SMD capacitors and I was having a fit testing them and now want something better.
Also making the MCL leak capacitor checker, it calls for 40G resistor….WOW
I ordered 10 5G resistors, but will not be able to test them.

@larry_n7luf Due to the lack of space on my “small bench” and the shelving unit above it but also the limited space that I have designated for a lab/area I tend to use portable testing equipment ” rather” and also most of the projects that I build (of MCLs Patreon) are my own miniaturized variant of the original. So following the same idea the best/quickest and most accurate (with a reasonable range) portable “capacity testing” instrument I found (so far) is: Fluke 87 (V)-the multimeter.

However, for a wider range (especially for very low Pico Farad values) and more feature rich option I use a portable LCR namely BK880 by BK Electronics and I’m happy with it. It came with a wall wart as well which I prefer to use over the rechargeable (9V NiMn) battery that also came with it. So being an LCR instrument comes with a whole array of advantages such as ESR testing, Low ohms (under 1 Ohm) precision testing, Inductance testing, Component tolerance sorting function and some other “High Teck” functions that I’m yet to explore.

@ovi4 You having me looking at the “BK880 by BK Electronics”. Thank you!

I am still want to see what else I may want to get.

I hate to tell you how much cheap Amazon junk I have bought, but some are somewhat okay, but has limits for I am looking for.

@larry_n7luf Having those High Giga Ohms resistors is an absolute “a must” on the final calibration. They will also give you a true insight of how clean or…perhaps should I say: how low leakage the whole board is. Basically the whole idea of this tester is that it looks at resistance in the range of High Giga-ohms therefore the ability to sense that kind of range (1 – to- 40-50G Ohms) is the secret sauce of this amazing cap leakage tester. And like MCL stated many times before to those people who still think that to properly test a cap for leakage you’ll always need to use hundreds of volts. Well… he proves them all wrong by simply “thinking out of the box” and this is truly amazing. In fact this tester will sense faults “well beyond the obvious” by employing the so called “forecasting function”. Now going back on talking about those 5Giga resistors. I also have purchased 20 of them and put them all in series inside a Hammond box and fitted numerous BNC sockets on the face of that box and each BNC socket taps on to that huge 100Giga Ohms resistor once every 10 gigs but the first tap is at 5 Gigs. And this box has now become my reference box for calibrating the cap leak. tester but also for any future projects that will eventually require such levels of resistance for comparison. As for testing the individual 5Giga Ohms resistor…well…unfortunately do not have the means to do it as of yet but have purchased them from “DigiKey” so (al least for now) I have no choice but to “blindly trust” that they should/would work and be within the specs (as stated by the manufacturer). As a matter of fact, I ‘ve used that box and tested my build of the cap leakage tester and the full scale is somewhere around 50GigaOhms and I’m happy with the results and can say that I can fully trust that high Giga Ohms Box as being reasonably accurate and perfectly dependable.

@ovi4 I ordered from Amazon at $42.oo for ten of them “5G Ohm Resistor Ceramic Sheet Glass Glaze High Voltage Resistance Microphone Electrostatic”.

All I can do is hope, guess.

@larry_n7luf Note, you don’t necessarily need to go and buy the BK880. There is also BK879 but there are other names/manufacturers that have very similar products such as Keysight U1733C, UNI-T UT 622A, MASTECH MS5308 (this is the one that MCL has as well (if I’m right) but very likely “obsolete by now”, HANTECH 1833C etc.

@ovi4 Amazon has a HANTECH 1833C for $200.00 but maybe just a copy.

I guess which is the best to buy and not be sorry, and this all helps.

Yes I do buy to much from Amazon, but they seem to have whatever I need.

Well.. When I chose my BK880 I was actually on the verge of buying the Keysight U1733C but (back then) it had an expensively back braking price tag that I could simply not justify paying for. So my next option was the BK and my third would have certainly been the UNI-t UT 622A

@ovi4 This is good to see your reasons why you went this way. 

I am seeing both in about the same price range now.

If you had to do it today, would you for the Keysight U1733C, and why?

@larry_n7luf well, I would still stick with my BK even today simply because for the same money I get way more “bang for the buck” : I get a pair of (decent quality) Kelvin clips and a tweezer for the SMD components + is a 40.000 count as opposed to 20.000 for the Keysight one and I get an original wall wart as well. So the conclusion is even though you can buy the Keysight for the same (ballpark money) you’ll end up spending way more than the initial price because you’ll have no choice but to spend the extra for a pair of proper (original) Keysight “kelvin clips” (that are crucial for an accurate measurement !) and believe me, they are well overpriced ! simply because you’ll be paying for the name than for the quality/value. And if you want a pair of tweezers for SMD components…well…good luck with that one too. On the other hand the screen is a little better on the Keysight one because the lettering is thicker and somehow the whole display is a little bit fancier than of the BK880 model. However my BK880 has a light blue (white-ish) backlight (which I like better) as opposed to the “blinding orange” backlight (for the Keysight).

Feature ways, they are on par with each other (at least on paper) if you ignore the count that is obviously higher on the BK model.

The one downside that I found on the BK880 is that if you run it on the battery is an absolute “battery hog” and even on standby I measured around 57 microamps (as apposed to the factory specified 11 microamps) which is insane. Now there could be some software update to fix that but as of now I never actually search to see if there is un update for it or not. And this is why I only ever used it plugged in but hey… it doesn’t bother me at all, since it only ever gets used on the bench so…to me is fine.

Now…as for the Keysight model I’m not sure if it will act the same way on batteries since I never owned one so…

BK880 what’s in the box? : —>

With the Keysight U1733C what you’ll get in the box? :—>

You decide: 😇