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Ronald Dekker
Contents:
1. Introduction
2. The method Step-by-Step
3. How it works & some theory
4. Including Series Resistance
5. Back to homepage
1. Introduction
Whenever I can I always salvage (power) inductors from old PCBs and switched mode power supplies. A good assortment of different value
inductors always comes in handy during experiments, especially with boost converters and the like. Now, I am sure that there must be a system
by which manufacturers of these inductors mark them with the inductance value, but so far I have not been able to discover it. Some inductors
have some numbers printed on them, while others are marked with colored dots which are a disaster anyway because I am color blind. To
quickly sort out the inductance value of these inductors I use a simple method which I am sure will interest other inductor ignorami. The tools
you need are a 0-100 kHz function generator WITH 50 OHM OUTPUT, and an oscilloscope.
1. Connect the 50 ohm output of the function generator to the oscilloscope, and select a sine-wave signal.
2. Adjust the frequency of the generator to approximately 20 kHz.
3. Adjust the output voltage of the generator to 1 V peak-peak.
4. Connect the unknown inductor parallel to the oscilloscope (Fig. 2.1). Doing so will decrease the amplitude of the signal.
5. Now adjust only the frequency of the generator in such a way that the amplitude on the oscilloscope is exactly half the original value (0.5V
pp).
The way I execute steps 3 to 5 is as follows: In step 3 I first set the vertical sensitivity of the scope to 0.2 V/div. Then I adjust the amplitude
of the signal generator so that the sine wave exactly fits between the 25% and 75% markings on the screen (Fig. 2.1A). The amplitude is
now exactly 1V. Next I connect the inductor (step 4), and increase the vertical sensitivity to 0.1 V/div. In step 5 I now adjust the frequency
so that the sine wave again exactly fits in between the 25% and 75% markings (Fig. 2.1B). The amplitude of the sine wave is now 0.5 V.
6. Finally, read out the frequency, and calculate the inductance from L=4.57/f. With L in Henry and f in Hz. You may also prefer L=4570/f
with L in uH and f in kHz.
The exact ratio between the internal generator voltage and the voltage measured by the scope can be
calculated with a bit of straightforward network theory:
In this formula L represent the inductance, R the resistance (50 ohm), and omega the radial frequency ( = 2*pi*f with f in Hz).
The question now is for what frequency (Vscope/Vgen) = 0.5:
So finally: