The Importance of LCR Meters

[Audiofire]

It's because the capacitance range of multimeters is very limited (it can go to 9,999 uF on expensive models), and they are said to be somewhat inaccurate due to the technical method used for measuring capacitance.

Fluke multimeters can be acceptable for cursory measurements of capacitors (about 2 to 5% tolerance). The Fluke 80, 110, 170 and 280 series use pulsed direct current (not alternating current), probably at 0.3 volts to charge the capacitor and the capacitance measurement is calculated from the time it takes to charge to the resulting voltage (this information is freely available by contacting Fluke support like I did).

I bought an HP 4263A, because I now also need to measure inductors for speaker crossovers and I am gonna have an interest in learning about electrical engineering. I will also service old equipment and sell it again refurbished as a way to save it from the trash (and hopefully earn the money back paid for the irresistible test gear used to measure new capacitors and other things). ESR is an important way to check capacitors and DCR can be used to check for short circuits. I like the method of connecting capacitors with bigger capacitance in series, as this will lower the total capacitance:

Conversion Calculator Series and Parallel Capacitor | DigiKey

Calculate the total series and parallel capacitance of a circuit using DigiKey's Series and Parallel Capacitor calculator.

www.digikey.dk

Manufacturers do not check all capacitors that are produced, they use random sampling as that is what international standards entail (IEC 60410, ISO 2859-1, JIS Z 9015-1 and MIL-STD-1916). The acceptance quality limit (AQL) defines how many defective ones are allowed through a production run on average. It is physically impossible to check capacitance and dissipation factor on all capacitors, since billions are produced annually (I asked Nichicon on e-mail).