Buying ESR meter in Kenya

I usually get a lot of inquiries on where to buy ESR meter locally here in Kenya, personally I have done some research and most electronics shops attendant have no idea what it is.

Let’s hear this conversation between me and Paul Kabete from Kenya.

Paul: From my research including your recommendation I have come to see that an ESR meter is really handy for a good technician to save time and reduce guess work.

Humphrey: That is my favorite test equipment Paul.

Paul: It must be, just ahead of a multimeter, it’s an electrolytic capacitor police.

Humphrey: Not police Paul, but a detective.

Paul: Hahahhee, sure. Well I tried to look for it in many shops including xxxxxxx electronics shop but I couldn’t and have no idea of it.

Humphrey: Correct…they also asked me what is that?

Paul: Hahahahee Me they even told me to go and ask for that in the shop selling water meters.

With that I am pleased to announce that I have imported a few pieces of generic low priced ESR which I intend to sell here in Kenya and possibly East Africa only to start with.

For your information the meter is nameless as you can see the picture below.

Operation. This meter does not come with any manual, to start using the meter you will need to install a new 9 volts battery.

Then short the probes and power on the meter, this automatically reset the meter to Zero level and it’s now ready for use.

 

When you un-short the probes and touch them together you will notice it now record some reading and this means the meter is ready for use.

If you find the reading are not constant this means the battery is low and need to be replaced.

Usually if the capacitor you are testing has very high ESR then the meter will read open and this is seen as four (4) dashes (_ _ _ _) this is what you expect if the capacitor ESR has gone to the roof.

 

Meter at work, testing 100uF/160Volts, this is the common capacitor used to filter the B+ voltage in CRT television.

As you can see the ESR reading is 0.28 ohms and from the chart given on the meter this capacitor is okay.

  

Testing 220uF/400V capacitor usually used as the main filter capacitor in LG/Samsung CRT television.

The reading 0.29 ohm means this capacitor is in good health.

 

 

Testing 1uF/250Volts capacitor usually used to filter the 180Volts RGB supply.

The ESR reading is 20 ohms, this seems to be high but if you refer to the chart you will be surprised that this capacitor is also okay…usually low capacitance capacitor with high working voltage tend to have high ESR and this is okay but be sure you confirm from the chart provided.

Now here is a classic example of a faulty capacitor, looking at the capacitor it looks very innocent to eyes and testing with this meter I found it completely open(very high ESR which was out of range for this meter. Over 100 ohms) and therefore should be send to the dustbin.