How do you measure uH?

[TonyC]

Hi everyone...I live in South Africa I have asked at our local electronics shop as well as asking an electronic engineer and nobody knows what instrument to use to measure uH...Is this type of instrument used in some kind of industry such as armature winding?

[sinclairuser]

its just a type of multimeter
they are dirt cheap on ebay usually called an lcr meter.
also high end(expensive) multimeters, sometimes have L(inductance) and C(capacitance) added R is resistance(dc) or sometimes reactance(ac) which is on 99% of multimeters.

[TonyC]

Thanks Sinclairuser...I will hunt one down as my meter is in the other 1percent!

[sinclairuser]

resistance is on 99% of multimeters, L and C you usually have a separate meter for as multimeters with everything are rare and or expensive (is a better explanation)
the cheap lcr meters like the pic i posted are good enough for building coils.

[Gwil]

When looking for a meter to measure inductance, think about the sort of values you want to measure. If you were interested in TGSL coils for example (around 6mH or so) then a lowest range of 20mH would be fine. However for coils expected to be less than 2mH (2000uH) a lowest range of 2mH will give better resolution. Not all meters have a 2mH range.

[sinclairuser]

good point gwill, the pic i posted those philex clones do go low enough for pi work, i thought if he aimed for that he could not go wrong.
you will see two versions like that, yellow newcason ones(clones) £10-15, and blue philex(original) £15-30, i have both they work spot on, though throw the cheap lead acid 9v battery away that comes with it and put an alkaline one in.

[Silver Dollar]

Here's a link to one on EBAY. You can print the ad and bring it with you or search for one on your local Ebay
Or buy it for $23 shipped worldwide...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LCR-RCL-Indu...item5404325eae

[golfnut]

Be mindful of the frequency of the signal used by the Inductance function.

Ideally about the same as the frequ your Tx/Rx would be.

If the freq of the bridge is high and approaching resonance of your coil you get odd numbers.



I used a HP lab L bridge and coils I made look odd if the bridge was set to 100k, if 10k or 1k results were perfect

[DanZ]

Up until yesterday I've been using Qiaozhi's coil calculator (and still will) due to not having an inductance meter. I noticed yesterday that a local electronics shop now stocks some and bought one. When I got it home the first thing I did was verify 3 coils I wound using the coil calculator and they all measured as calculated!

[TonyC]

Thanks for the help guys.....And thanks for the link!..I will place an order for one