What is a trimmer capacitor?

It is a variable capacitor which has the facility to vary its capacitance value, but frequently once variation is sufficiently, it is known as the trimmer capacitor. It is also called as simply trimmer or padder.  In some applications, the need for variation in the capacitance value is not frequent such variable capacitor are trimmer capacitors. The trimmer is similar look like padder but padder has more plates and the size of padder is larger than trimmer. The trimmers are available in number of shapes. The dielectric material is used for trimmers are ceramic, mica or plastic. The capacitance value of trimmer is range from between 5 pF to 30 pF where the capacitance value of padder is range between 10 pF to 100pF.

The various types of trimmer capacitors are as given below,

• Air dielectric rotary capacitor.
• Plastic dielectric capacitor.
• Ceramic dielectric trimmer capacitor.
• Differential air dielectric capacitor.
• Mica dielectric capacitor.
• Concentric air dielectric capacitor.