Ah, The Humble Neon

[pwdrive]

Reading through some of the stuff that Joe & Mark uploaded to the archives I came across a piece of test gear that was standard equipement in a lot of engineers toolboxes, including mine, the humble neon capacitor tester...So simple, after regular use you got an idea of what it should flash like in respect to the value of capacitance etc under test.

Lawrence.

[Joe]

It's similar to my home-made Continuity Tester: with experience it's tells far more than short/open circuit.

- Joe

[tiv48]

my home brew mk2 cap reformer/tester now contains a switchable series neon and very usefull it is too .it uses a nixie psu supplying 220 volts at 10MA the psu is run from a 12 volt transformer so is (i hope )safer than off the mains job.
rob t

[pwdrive]

Hi Joe, yes the neon cap tester is a neat cheap bit of kit and can reveal all soughts, If I remember correctly mine was straight off the mains via a BY100 and built in a cigar tube (No H&S comments please) we used cigar tubes and some of the aluminium pickup cartridge cans to build all sorts in, multi vib. signal injectors and signal tracers comes to mind.
In our workshop we had a Hunts capacitor tester but it rarely got used, ESR meters were more or less unheard of in the places I worked. We also used to build simple CRT boppers on a piece of plywood, I built a posh one with a meter so you could monitor all the crud flying off the cathode when boosting the heater.

Lawrence.

[Joe]

If I remember correctly mine was straight off the mains via a BY100 and built in a cigar tube (No H&S comments please)

I'd expect nothing less!

- Joe

[pwdrive]

Yes, oh the joys of appentiship, five years of learning bad habits...

Lawrence.