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Rant: I used to never bother with capacitor ESR testing, now I'm a believer
I was fixing this old Samsung TV from 2012 this morning, power supply looked fine visually but it kept shutting off. My buddy who runs a repair shop in Phoenix stopped by and told me I was an idiot for just looking at bulges. He pulled out his little ESR meter and tested a cap that looked perfect, read like 30 ohms. Swapped that one cap and the TV fired right up. I always thought ESR meters were overkill for hobby stuff, but that one test saved me maybe an hour of guessing. Now I'm looking at getting a decent one, maybe the Peak Atlas or something similar. Anyone else have a similar moment where one tool totally changed how you approach repairs?
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ninas673d ago
Man, I bought a cheap ESR meter years ago thinking it was just a fancy toy, then it saved my bacon on a dead monitor where every cap looked brand new. Makes you feel a bit silly for all the time you wasted before, doesn't it?
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joel_hall173d ago
A buddy of mine had a similar experience, @ninas67. He spent two weeks swapping parts on an old TV that would flicker on and off. New power supply board, new mainboard, the works. Finally bought a cheap ESR meter out of frustration and found two capacitors in the vertical deflection circuit that looked perfect but measured completely open. One afternoon with that meter saved him hundreds of dollars in parts he didn't need. He still gets a little red in the face when anyone brings up the time he wasted.
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daniel_martin3d ago
Two blown caps in an old stereo had me chasing ghosts for a month. Ended up being the one thing I swore I checked.
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