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I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard or read "I tested the capacitors and they all test good but it still doesn't work." The person doing the speaking or writing had used a modern capacitor tester which only puts about 3 volts across the capacitor. That may be fine for caps used in transistor circuits but not for those used in tube circuits. The voltages in tube circuits can be as high as 600 volts and rarely are less than 100 volts. To perform a valid test you must place a significant voltage across the cap. After giving some preliminary information a method will be provided for making valid tests on capacitors.
Types of Capacitors.
There are two basic kinds of capacitors, electrolytic and nonelectrolytic. Electrolytic capacitors are used in the power supplies of vacuum tube and transistor equipment. The testing method described here requires a modification to the basic testing method discussed below. The non-electrolytic caps are subdivided into ceramic, paper, mica, and plastic. The plastic kind are further subdivided into various names of the plastic and all of them seem to begin with "polly". I'm not going to bore you by laboring through each of the various pollies. The next time you order capacitors from a catalog or online you will make their acquaintance.
This is never a normal condition. If the coupling cap is between low level stages, further back in the amplifier, the resistance in the plate circuit will keep the tube from dissipating enough power to glow red but the sound will be badly distorted. You can often verify this using a voltmeter to measure grid voltages. Tubes that use cathode bias should have zero volts on the grid. Tubes which use fixed bias should have the negative voltage on the grids and in the case of a push pull output both tubes should have the same grid voltage. There aren't many places where even a small amount of leakage can be tolerated but there are a few. Often a capacitor is connected from some part of the circuit to ground. These are usually called "bypass" capacitors. That's not a special kind of cap, just the way it is being used in the circuit. If the resistance associated with the cap is not too large it can work for many years with a small leakage current. If it is a screen bypass cap it may lower the screen grid voltage and lower the gain of the amplifier stage. A leaky cap in the AGC circuit of a receiver may or may not have a significant effect on its operation. Electrolytic capacitors can fail in one of two ways. One is to be open. The capacitance is reduced to a very small value because the electrolyte has dried out. It will no longer provide filtering and the symptom will be a strong AC hum in the radio or amplifier. The other failure mode is to conduct a heavy current when the operating voltage is applied. This will blow the power supply fuse if the equipment has one. In an all American five radio such a capacitor will burn out the rectifier tube. Note that such a capacitor may test as good on a tester intended for transistor electrolytic capacitors. One more failure mode of capacitors is to develop a series resistance. This is abbreviated ESR which stands for effective series resistance. This failure mode is difficult to test for using simple equipment such as is being discussed in this article. It happens much more often to electrolytic than to plastic film capacitors. In a power supply it will manifest itself as increased ripple in the power supply but the capacitor will test good using the technique described on this page.
For a verbal description click here. The power supply should provide a fairly stable DC output. The meter should be set to measure DC voltage.
short time but the reading will decay to zero vary quickly. The time back to zero is about 8 time constants. One time constant in seconds is equal to R in ohms times C in farads. If you are using a meter with 10 meg ohms input resistance and testing a .1 microfarad cap the time constant is 1 second. If the capacitor is good the meter should indicate zero after 8 seconds. If you are testing an electrolytic capacitor calculate the time constant from 220 k ohms times the capacitance in farads. If the cap is totally shorted the meter will read the output voltage of the power supply and stay there. A more likely outcome is for the cap to be leaky. In that case the meter will kick high and fall back but not all the way to zero. Using a 10 meg ohm meter the leakage current in microamps is given by I = V / 10. A cap with a leakage current of only 1 microamp will throw the bias off by .5 volts if the grid resistor is 500 k ohms. Switching the meter to a lower range should be done with caution. If you should forget to change it back you could burn out your meter. If the meter fails to kick high it means one of two things. Either the capacitor is open or the capacitance is too small to produce a noticeable kick. A .01 microfarad cap is about the smallest that will give the kick. Of course this depends on the response speed of the meter movement. You might be able to go as low as .0025 microfarads if you have a small and fast meter. If you connect an electrolytic capacitor to the tester a direct current will be observed which will never go to zero. This is termed the leakage current. In normal operation it does no harm but if it becomes too large the capacitor can fail violently as described above. A set of formulas which give the approximate leakage current are given below. ILMin = Sqrt(VC)/5 ILMax = Sqrt(VC)/2 ILWorst Case = Sqrt(VC)*6 Where IL is the leakage current in microamps, V is the rated voltage in volts, and C is the rated capacitance of the capacitor in microfarads. With a 220 k ohm resistor in parallel with the meter the leakage current is given by ILMeasured = V / 220 k ohms Where V is the reading on the voltmeter. This circuit can be used to reform an old electrolytic. The current will gradually come down over time when left connected. If the leakage current will not go below the worst case value calculated above it is doubtful that it can be used successfully in a circuit. It should be thrown away. The ILMin and ILMax values may seem a little optimistic especially on older capacitors. However the ILWorst
is not. For example suppose you have a 100 uf cap at 450 volts. If you apply 400 volts to this capacitor the worst case leakage current is.
Case
ILWorst Case = Sqrt(400*100)*6 = 1.2 x 103 microamps = 1.2 mA. Multiplying this current by 400 volts gives the power dissipated by the leaky capacitor. P = 1.2 mA x 400 volts = 0.48 watts. That's getting up to the point where the capacitor may begin to feel a little warm. If it's warm on the outside it's hot on the inside. To avoid a literal explosion it's best not to use a capacitor with this amount of leakage.
For a verbal description click here. The transformer should be a 280 VCT (140-0-140) at as low a current rating as you can find. Unless you plan to let it serve double duty as a project power supply. When used to test capacitors the current drawn from the transformer secondary is miniscule. The meter needs to be a 50 microamp full scale movement. If it has a 0 to 50 microamp scale that's fine because the current is what you really want to know. If it has a different scale you can replace it using the techniques described in the Filter Choke Analyzer article. Do not omit the 150 k ohm 2 watt resistor. This is to discharge the filter capacitor after the power switch is turned off. The nature of this tester requires that the voltage start from zero each time. The 150 k ohm resistor discharges the filter capacitor. When testing small non-electrolytic capacitors the switch should be set to the open position. In this setting the meter reads leakage current directly. When testing electrolytic capacitors the meter becomes a voltmeter with 500 volts full scale. The measured leakage current is ILMeasured = V / R Where V is the reading on the voltmeter and R is the value of the resistor that is selected. The selection of resistors allows the tester to be used to reform electrolytic capacitors. For details on how to reform capacitors refer to Restoring Dead Capacitors. This article illustrates that you can do a lot without sophisticated equipment like that found in university and industrial research laboratories. Have fun.
A heart in love with the beauty of glowing tubes never grows old. Home This page last updated January 5, 2011.