'Megger' (Not) Insulation tester - good buy?

[Joe]

The other thing to consider is how they'll perform when the inside of a radio cabinet has got warm. Try holding a hairdryer on them for a bit and then re-test them.

- Joe

[Yorkie]

Coincidentally when David posted the question about the VC60B+ insulation tester, I had just decided to order one. (As it happens, not from the supplier in the link, but another ebay shop who ship from within the UK rather than direct from China).

It arrived this morning and I have had a play with it. Although its operation is fairly obvious, my only criticism is that the instruction book is only in Chinese! I have emailed the seller to ask if an English version is available, just in case I have missed anything obvious.
It looks like it should prove useful!

Andy

I don't know how many pages the book has Andy, and of course you can't cut and paste the text into an online translation progam, but such programs do accept two styles of Chinese - 'Chinese Simplified' and 'Chinese Traditional'. Quite a challenge, given that Chinese consists of pictograms and doesn’t have an alphabet as such. (Maybe it translates it from Chinese to 'Double Dutch, then you have to translate it again to get it into English!). I see that Yahoo 'Bablefish' which I've always found works well enough, has been taken over by Microsoft and swallowed up into Bing:

http://www.microsofttranslator.com/?FORM=R5FD

As to the lowest test voltage of the V60B 'megger' being 250V, I'm probably talking tosh (a habit of mine which I've honed to perfection), but I wonder if there's any way of constructing an outboard voltage divider to reduce the voltage by say a factor of ten, down to 25V? After all, they do that internally with the voltage ranges. I wonder if it applies a DC voltage, or AC, and if so, what frequency?

It's all Chinese to me

Do you have a link to the UK suppier please Andy?

[Andy M0FYA]

David,
This is where I bought mine from -
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/280857870216?s...K:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649
I said that I had emailed the seller for an English translation of the manual - this arrived promptly as a Word file, which if I have done it correctly will be attached to this reply, fingers crossed!
I have been testing a few more capacitors, as Gary says, brand new ones read better than 1 Gohm, and in many cases exceed the max range of the tester at 2 Gohm.
I have tested a few 'high spec' NOS military types with glass end-seals, and they are just as good, and some NOS 1960's Russian types with rubber end-seals which are around 50 Mohms.

When do you judge a capacitor to be unfit to use?

Andy


  VC60B_EN.docx (Size: 213.01 KB / Downloads: 96)


Here's the manual as PDF file for people who don't have the more modern versions of Word. - Joe

  VC60B_EN.pdf (Size: 351.3 KB / Downloads: 130)

[Yorkie]

Thanks for tweaking the Word Doc Joe.

Delightful Chinese 'Ingrish' translation! I mustn't mock - what a task it must be to translate from Chinese to English and vice-versa. Reading the manual evoked the explanation of the fictional 'Turbo Entabulator' which I've mentioned before, but might be worth another outing. I do so admire the wordsmithery, evocative of the likes of the late Ronnie Barker or Prof Stanley Unwin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIS5n9Oyzsc

Neat that the VC60B tester uses a 9V battery and presumably - by use of an oscillator and transformer - steps the voltage up to as high as 1kV.
Comes in a neat little plastic box too - it rather looks like they've tried to emulate the appearance of Robin test gear. No doubt that's made in China too, or wherever.

[Yorkie]

Coincidentally when David posted the question about the VC60B+ insulation tester, I had just decided to order one...

It arrived this morning and I have had a play with it.

It looks like it should prove useful!

Andy

I thought I'd resurrect this thread to ask Andrew (or anyone else who has one), in the light of experience, how he's found the Victor insulation tester in use.

Admittedly only having 250V, 500V & 1KV does rather limit its usefulness for our purposes, and like many restorers, I do tend to replace waxies in sight because if they're not yet leaky, the chances are that they will be, so it does rather make the act of testing them a bit pointless.

I know there are restorers who see this as unmethodical, but after maybe 60 or 70 years (sometimes longer), they'll be past their best, and it's one thing if a resistor drifts high in value, but quite another matter if a cap goes leaky and starts plonking DC were we don't want it. True, there are some waxies that can be in such awkward places that if they test OK, then we may prefer to leave them in situ.

I don't want to spark a debate about the merits of one approach or the other, but to ask about the Victor VC60B tester as Amazon have them at £36.99 post free:


http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009U...il_1p_1_ti

[Andy M0FYA]

I can only say that I am more than happy with mine, and consider it money well spent.

Simple to use, it 'does what it says on the tin'.

It's easy to forget though that if you test a good capacitor at 1000v, the capacitor can 'bite' for quite a long time afterwards! So if you want to check the capacitance as well as the leakage, do that first, or you might otherwise destroy whatever bit of kit you are measuring capacitance with!

Andy

[pwdrive]

It's easy to forget though that if you test a good capacitor at 1000v, the capacitor can 'bite' for quite a long time afterwards!

Ah.... The old catch the apprentice trick.

Lawrence.

[Refugee]

I can only say that I am more than happy with mine, and consider it money well spent.

Simple to use, it 'does what it says on the tin'.

It's easy to forget though that if you test a good capacitor at 1000v, the capacitor can 'bite' for quite a long time afterwards! So if you want to check the capacitance as well as the leakage, do that first, or you might otherwise destroy whatever bit of kit you are measuring capacitance with!

Andy

I just connect a volt meter across capacitors after testing and watch them discharge. A 20k/volt model can be used if you are in a hurry.

[pwdrive]

I know some folks use meggers but I never have, used to use a mains rectified neon in a cigar/old cartridge can (what else) and the Avo on ohms for quick checks as the needle as the capacitor charges can tell you quite a bit.
Waxies I would change anyway along with some other well known types if it meant saving say an output or mains transformer, but I would fault find most down to that particular component first otherwise you don't learn 'owt, in most cases it's only a few minutes extra time unless they had obviously popped then it would be instant replace.

Lawrence.