On 03/08/2016 06:33 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> Never had any issues with it turning on unwanted components.  Works
> fine in circuit too.  A lot of folks, on both the Tek and HP/Agilent
> groups are using the instrument, and I kinda went with the flow and
> bought a kit.  An hour or two in the afternoon, and it's all assembled
> up and ready to use.  Very handy little instruments, these hand held
> ESR meters.
>
> Mark
> Yes, they do an excellent job of measuring the most common electrolytic
> capacitor failure, detecting problems 2 years before a loss of
> capacitance will be measured by the common DVM in capacitance mode. They
> don't have a range to check the psu stuff, so generally speaking, that
> mode is similar in usefullness to those appendages on the belly of a
> boar hog.
>
> That $179 Wizard probably saved the station 500k USD in keeping about 15
> DVC-PRO broadcast VCR's going in years of their heyday. Capacitors and
> headwheels still cost us at least $100k though. Pinch rollers and other
> rubber parts were peanuts in comparison. Panasonic usually asked about
> $1500-$2500 a board for a new one, with 11 to 14 boards in a machine,
> and a minimum of a thou & parts at MSRP to repair one sent in.  That
> sort of outgo resulted in permission to buy the wizard in about 30
> seconds. Wasn't hard at all. :)  We still have, kept them like trophy
> deer horns, 3 ea, 2 lb coffee cans 2/3rds full of those capacitors that
> failed.  Thats a boatload because most were smaller than the eraser on a
> #2 lead pencil, so there are thousands in those coffee cans.  All
> surface mounted too.  And yours truly changed about 75% of them, with my
> assistant doing the last 25% after I gave him my office keys & a badly
> worn red office chair at a retirement party, on June 30th 2002.  But by
> 2004 much of that video gear had been replaced with servers with banks
> of hard drives.  Even the news cameras were insertable HD storage by
> then, still are today but replaced with full hidef stuff now.
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett

As you know, I like to futz around with older Tek equipment.  I usually 
snatch up the "for parts or not working" units on the Bay of E.  Usually 
the problem(s) is centered in the power supply.  First thing I look at 
after dragging the schematics out are the caps. Visual, then an ESR 
search.  A lot of the units that were made in the era I like to fix have 
bad electrolytic caps, and a good many have those bad caps that were 
installed in a lot of other hardware like computers and such.  I forget 
if it was the Chinese or Koreans that tried to make caps based on stolen 
tech, but a lot of those caps found their way into our electronics.  Tek 
was no different. At any rate, the ESR meter makes troubleshooting power 
supplies bunches easier.

Mark

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