Super small caps / Fluke

Tony Tone

Member
How come I can never get a good reading of out of circuit small caps? Is that just a fact of life? Got the Fluke 15B+, is my multimeter a knock-off? LOL. Or are the smart tweezers better for this small stuff?
 

mnaty

New member
I though I responded to this previously, but guess it didn't take.

If you want to be certain that your getting a good connection you can pull the smd off board and solder leads to contact points. then attach probes to leads. However, most techs will say that if you part in question requires this much work,, then just replace. However, if you are trying to verify if a replacement part is within tolerance for substitution, this this would be a viable method.
 

Tony Tone

Member
Thank you Duke. I need to keep this mind. I've heard this a couple of times, so I need to trust the people telling it as so : )
I guess I had one of the 0.1% once upon a time and keeps me wondering about these bad boys. Always questioning things to try to make sense to myself. Thankful for your guys direction. It's the little things that help when you are trying to learn by self-teaching. If it wasn't for this forum I'd probably end up giving up. But having someone to answer small questions is a blessing. Thank you. I do have millions of questions though. Thanks guys !

Like sometimes you have a board with some caps that have one side blown off from water damage but a tiny piece still sticking and they are good. They look bad, but they are good. & sometimes they don't look that bad but could be. When you have dozens of them on a water damaged board and your trouble shooting I think it'd be smarter to test the dozen bad looking ones and replace those out of spec; rather then change them all because they look bad. & sometimes they could be OL too, right?

(As for super small caps, I was meaning ones that are the size of dust LOL, &/or of small capacitance values. I always get different readings and they are never anything close to the values they say they are supposed to be on the schematics, but yet they are good and they work [or do they not I wonder] I was thinking maybe a Fluke wasn't a good tool for values under a certain range, or if mine was no good. As I'm troubleshooting and lost totally, I just start testing everything along that line in hopes to find something wrong and it will fix everything. Or testing them anyways so that I feel secure that all of these X's are good and I need to look elsewhere.

I know that I don't know nothing, so that makes me keep in mind that anything is a possibility. I have lots to learn.
 
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Tony Tone

Member
I was seeing those smart tweezers and wondered if other people used them and if they were useful. I was thinking they'd be great for stuff like this if you really just had to know to eliminate bad guess work. Dunno. Was just wondering, & looks like they're not all that or necessary -LOL.
 

mnaty

New member
As for the smart tweezers, i dont know. However i do have tweezer probes for my multimeter as there are many occasions where i find these useful as its just easier to hit both sides of smd components.
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11060

I bought mine on aliexpress a long time ago. Took a couple of weeks to get. Probably not nearly as accurate as the extech model.
 
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