Need Help!- capacitors

[jguerrera]

What is the correct way to check a capacitor to see if it is good or bad?

Thanks

[Al_The_Man]

For capacity, you either need a capacitor meter or use an R/C time circuit with a sensitive volt meter.
But for opens and short circuits, a simple ohmmeter will work.
Shorts are obvious, a rough guide to open and capacity is to place the ohm meter across the cap and watch the charge rate, (the meter puts out a voltage on ohms), when it stops, reverse the leads, you will see a discharge in the opposite polarity, the time taken to charge and discharge is a rough indication of capacity, especially if you compare it to a known good cap.
Al.

[vger]

Good info Al. I used to check for leakage by charging the cap to a known voltage level, then wait for a bit of time and check the voltage. If the cap was leaky, the voltage would be lower, sometimes much lower than the charged value.

Steve