How to test capacitance of a capacitor with a digital multimeter

The digital multimeter are of different types but the one I recommend and used myself for capacitance reading is as shown below.

 There are esr meters which are those dedicated for capacitor readings but are somehow expensive infact it is somehow difficult to found here in Nigeria that is the reason why I stick to the digital meter for capacitance reading and it has really helped me a lot.

How I make the readings

      Notice the position of the probe.the positive probe removed and positioned as seen and on the meter you range it to the capacitive range(marked F) as shown

 








The only disadvantage of this meter is that it only reads up to 200uf any value higher than this is unreadable it only gives value of 1.but I specially have a method i use to measure value higher than 200uf but i will write-about that later.

in this test below i am reading a polyester capacitor of value 105j 400v.what i am testing is the capacitance which is 105j.this value is 105=1000000pf 001

alternatively,

1000000pf=1uf.

since the value of my cap is 1uf.to check if this cap is good i range my meter to 2uf or 20uf. i range mine to 20uf and from the picture you can see that my reading is 0.95 which is approximately 1uf.

 this means this cap is in good condition.you can also same method for other type of capacitors.Hope this little tutorial helps.if you have any question you can ask using the comment box.

Share This:

Facebook

Twitter

Google Plus

Pinterest

Linkedin