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Assembly Manual ESR & Low Ohms Cat No. K 7204 Meter by Bob Parker ACN 000 908 716 Reproduced in part by arrangement Please read Disclaimer carefully as we with Electronics Australia, from their can only guarantee parts and not the January 1996 edition. labour content you provide. K I T If you repair switch-mode power supplies, TV receivers, computer monitors, vintage radios, or similar equipment, and/or if you need to measure very low values of resistance, this proj- ect can save you lots of time and aggravation - as it has for me. It measures an aspect of electrolytic capacitor performance which is very important, but normally very difficult to check: the equivalent series resistance, or ‘ESR’. ome wise person once said, “The can do is give a low reading if the elec- currents, the electrolyte will start to Sreliability of any piece of electronic tro is nearly open circuit. decompose and the dielectric may dete- equipment is inversely proportional to riorate - and the ESR will increase far the number of electrolytic capacitors in About ESR... more rapidly. it”, and I doubt that many service techni- To make things worse, as the ESR cians would disagree! So what exactly is an electrolytic’s increases, so does the internal heating Especially now that switch-mode equivalent series resistance? caused by ripple current. This can lead to power supplies (SMPSs) have been Electrolytics depend on a water-based commonly used in domestic VCRs and electrolyte, soaked into a strip of porous TVs, etc for a decade or so, one of the material between the aluminium foil most likely components to fail is the plates, to complete the ‘outer’ electrical humble electrolytic. The symptoms can connection to the aluminium oxide be as diverse as a VCR’s playback pic- dielectric coating on the anode foil. ture swimming in tiny dots, up to SMPSs The electrolyte has electrical resist- mysteriously self-destructing. ance which, along with the (negligible) As a service technician myself (though resistance of the connecting leads and I’d prefer to be a full-time designer!), I aluminium foil plates, forms the capaci- was just about tearing my hair out tor’s equivalent series resistance. because of the difficulty in determining Normally the ESR has a very low which electros were faulty and which value, which stays that way for many ones were still OK, in SMPSs and other years unless the rubber seal is defective. equipment. I wanted to be able to check Then the electrolyte’s water component electros in circuit, with the power safely gradually dries out and the ESR creeps disconnected. up with time. The electro gradually acts Why not use a readily-available capac- more and more like a capacitor with its itance meter? Because when electros go own internal series resistor... faulty, they normally don’t lose their capacitance significantly (as many tech- Heat makes it worse nicians assume they do). Rather their equivalent series resistance (ESR) ‘goes If an electro is subjected to high tem- through the roof’. Capacitance meters peratures, especially from heat generat- don’t tell you this; about the best they ed internally as a result of large ripple Text and illustrations courtesy of Electronics Australia only a few thousand hours at their max- needed because the display decimal imum rated temperature and ripple cur- points are on the wrong side for this rent. (A year is only 8766 hours!) application. Switch-mode power supplies place If you forget to turn the power off, the quite severe stresses on filter capacitors. micro will do it for you when the dis- Because of their compact construction, played reading has remained the same temperatures are high (that’s why your for two minutes. This feature can be dis- PC’s power supply is equipped with a abled for uninterrupted operation from a fan), and the capacitors have to endure 9V optional plugpack. large ripple currents. When the battery voltage is nearly too low for the circuit’s 5V regulator to Micro-based ESR meter function correctly, the Z86 reduces the power to the LED displays and flashes a Necessity is supposed to be ‘the moth- ‘b’ on the right-hand one in the ‘off- er of invention’, but desperation works scale’ condition, to warn you to look for even better and I designed this ESR a new battery. meter from scratch. It’s based on a ver- satile Zilog Z86E0408 or Z86E0412 Meter operation microcontroller - which already has two voltage comparators and two flexible There’s a single pushbutton, which has counter/timers built in, greatly simplify- three functions: one press turns the ing the rest of the circuit. A micro also power on, and another press will switch allows the easy incorporation of some it off again if the measured resistance is A close up view of the ESR meter ‘user-friendly’ features... 1Ω or more. PCB, showing the position and orien- This instrument has three ESR ranges, A push of the button with the leads tation of all the parts - except the test with full-scale readings to 0.99Ω, 9.9Ω shorted together will cause their resist- leads jacks, push button and battery. Ω Note that the LED displays and deci- and 99 respectively. The range is auto- ance value to be subtracted from all sub- mal point LEDs are mounted via a 28- matically selected by the micro, so your sequent readings, as long as it’s less than pin IC socket. hands are free to hold the test leads. The 1Ω. an upward spiral in the capacitor’s core accuracy of the prototypes was better Before making a measurement on an temperature, followed by complete fail- than +/-5% of displaying reading, +/-1 electrolytic, first discharge it. I find a ure - sometimes even explosive! digit. A single ‘-’ on the left-hand dis- 100Ω 5W does this well. Then connect The service life of electros is approxi- play indicates a reading above 99Ω. the test leads - either way around. If your mately halved for every 100C increase in The readout is on two 0.5’’ (13mm) capacitor is still in circuit (with the temperature and, surprisingly, many are seven-segment LED displays, plus two power OFF!), you’re likely to get quite designed for a reliable operating life of 3mm decimal point LEDs which are an accurate reading, because it should be The schematic may look a little complicated, but the circuit is actually quite elegant. Everything is under the control of IC2, a low cost microcontroller. As well as auto ranging, it also compensates for test lead resistance. Page 2 Text and illustrations courtesy of Electronics Australia the component with by far the lowest Parts List high-frequency impedance. The circuit’s test signal has a peak Resistors open-circuit voltage of 600mV (maxi- (All 0.25W 5% unless noted) 4-band 5% 5-band 1% R1,19,20,21,23,24 10k brn-blk-org-gld brn-blk-blk-red-brn mum 100mV peak at full-scale reading), R2,27,28 4.7k yel-vio-red-gld yel-vio-blk-brn-brn so it won’t make diodes or transistors R3,26 15k brn-grn-org-gld brn-grn-blk-red-brn conduct and cause measurement errors. R4,25 47k yel-vio-org-gld yel-vio-blk-red-brn Compare the reading you get with the R5,7,9,15 2.2k red-red-red-gld red-red-blk-brn-brn front-panel table, to get an idea of R6 10k 1% M/F brn-blk-org-brn brn-blk-blk-red-brn whether the electro’s ESR is about nor- R8 1k 1% M/F brn-blk-red-brn brn-blk-blk-brn-brn R10 100Ω 1% M/F brn-blk-brn-brn brn-blk-blk-blk-brn mal or significantly above it. R11 220Ω red-red-brn-brn red-red-blk-blk-brn The table’s approximate ‘worst ESR’ R12 1k brn-blk-red-gld brn-blk-blk-brn-brn figures were taken from the Nippon R13 100k brn-blk-yel-gld brn-blk-blk-org-brn Chemi-Con Aluminium Electrolytic R14 220k red-red-yel-gld red-red-blk-org-brn Ω Capacitors Catalog Number 4, as R16 180 brn-gry-brn-gld brn-gry-blk-blk-brn R17 6.8k blu-gry-red-gld blu-gry-blk-brn-brn 100kHz impedance figures for their R18 680Ω blu-gry-brn-gld blu-gry-blk-blk-brn ‘SXE’, ‘SXG’ and ‘LXA’ capacitor R22 470k 1% M/F yel-vio-yel-brn yel-vio-blk-org-brn series. They agree pretty closely with R29 2.7k red-vio-red-gld red-vio-blk-brn-brn my own measurements of many new VR1 10k hor. trimpot electros of assorted brands, styles, sizes VR2 200Ω hor. trimpot and ages. Capacitors From my actual faultfinding experi- C1 100uF 16/25 VW RB IC1 78L05 voltage regulator electrolytic IC2 Z86E0408/Z86E0412 ence with the prototypes, an electro’s C2,4,5,13 0.1uF/100n/104 50VW microcontroller ESR needs to be many times the table disc/monolithic (with custom firmware) value before it’s likely to cause trouble. C3,9 220uF 16/25VW RB IC3 4094 CMOS shift register electrolytic DIS1,2 Seven-segment LED Low ohms uses C6 47uF 50VW bipolar RB displays LTS 5503AE electrolytic (see text) C7 33nF/0.033uF/333 63/100VW LED1,2 3mm LEDs (see text) The instrument is very handy for C8 22uF 16/25 VW RB measuring low values of resistance, too. electrolytic Miscellaneous But note that because it makes an AC C10 0.47uF/470n/474 Resistor 82R 1% & resistor 5.6R 5% (used measurement, it can’t give a sensible 63/100VW MKT for calibration); XTAL-1 3.58MHz crystal, indication of the DC resistance of induc- C11,12 27pF 50V NPO disc ceramic HC-49/U case; One each 16, 18 28-pin IC sockets; ‘216’ type battery snap lead; plas- tive components, such as transformer Semiconductors tic utility box, type UB3; PC board; 95 x windings or chokes.