You're right, the dissipation factor means the power loss in the
capacitor. The more power loss, the worse.
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On Fri, Jul 23, 2021 at 10:45 AM Martin <musaeum@...> wrote:
Hi all,
I have an HP 4261A LCR-meter... apart from capacity, it displays dissipation factor. This can be converted to ESR by taking into account capacity and frequency.
I just built a conversion table... but when looking at it I wonder if the D-factor wouldn't be the better choice to judge a capacitor. For one, the D-factor is independent of the capacity, i.e. a D-factor of 0,1 has the same "quality meaning" for a 1uF as for a 10000uF capacitor. Second, the ESR, even when computed to the n-th decimal, does not seem to be a well defined value. What I mean is that you do not have a defined value as for the capacity, there is no information about what the ESR has to be.
Is this because folks better understand the concept of series resistance, or because its easier to measure, that you see so many ESR-meters by now?
Or am I wrong?
cheers
Martin
