In view of my infrequent repairs and my limited knowledge of electricity (tho I can learn), what is a recommended digital multimeter and where to buy? I have no idea what my budget is but for starters lets say $100 (estimate). I had a old analog one but it's old and right now I can't find it so I'm willing to buy new.
Also, when I read one ad, it said the digital multimeter didn't need to make contact with the diode? Not sure what this means? You still need to have I assume 2 wires to touch the things in question, right, so the meter can read the differences?
Doing some quick research what do you think of a) Fluke 115 Compact True-RMS Digital Multimeter or b) RSR Environmental Tester + Multi Function DMM
These are not priced the same so maybe not apple to apple comparison. I'm not going to use it a lot and I really just need it for voltage and continuity checking. Don't need a $400 Fluke with my knowledge (tho I might dream of having it). Thanks again...you guys are great help !!!!
I vote for buying or getting free with a coupon the Harbor Freight digital meters. They are cheap, yes, but work fine and if you should drop it you don't have many $$ to lose. I have used everything from $500 instruments to my free HF, and the HF is just fine for everyday use around the house. In a scientific laboratory, no, but the OP is looking to learn and free beats the heck out of $100 or higher.
Use Flukes at work and no doubt they are a great relaible and accurate meter. I have a $30 meter at home, dont know the name but I have had it for about 20 years. It still works great too. I prefer meters that will measure capacitance because you can tell which end of a cable has a broken wire.if it can measure wire to wire capacitance otherwise all you can tell is that the wire is open.
Buy a simple $30 (or less) multimeter from your local haredware, radio shack, or harbour freight style shop. Anything more, for your purposes and use, will be a total waste.
I have a $200 bench tester and a handfull of lesser units - a $10 one travels with me in each vehicle, and another in my tool ox.
I think there is something to be said for starting off with a cheap meter. For one thing, most people connnect them wrong a few times before leaning to be more careful, so they'll only be burning out (one range of a) cheap meter. (There is overvoltage protection on a lot of meters, especially expensive ones, but I odn't know who well it works.) One can burn out a part of a meter by setting it to too low a range, and even on self-ranging, can't one damage the meter by trying to measure resistance when there is 20 vdc or 110 vac present?
Then there is the meter I left in the engine compartment connected to the battery. I didn't remember it until I checked the oil in Missouri.
For another, very few uses of a beginner require precise measurement. Plus or minus 20% is good enough, because in most cases, if the value is within 30% of what it's supposed to be, it will be just what it's supposed to be. For voltage and resistance. Most people don't measure current very often, but it's even more true for current, which usually isn't rated, so any reasonable value is thought to be correct and is probably accurate enough.
When most electric things** break they break completely. Yes, there are times when that's not true, and times when a tenth of a volt matters, but then after using his head to reach conclusions, the OP can buy another, better meter. **I guess semiconductors are named after semi-conductinng, but the OP won't be working on them this year. Maybe the power suppoly or the speakers but not the internal circuits.
Finally, the only big problem with the 4 dollar HF meters is that they don't have an audible continuity tester. But it took me a year or two to notcie that. A 20 dollar rado shack meter is okay too, or the 24 dollar at Lowes or HD.
Whenever I'm down in the dumps I buy musyelf another screwdriver. Sometimes a meter. My most expensive is about 60.
When he has bigger uses, he'll know what he wants and how much it is worth it.
Harbor Freight sells one for about a buck-ninety-eight. It's more than adequate to determine if a wire is hot, open windings in a motor, and other simple inquiries.
If you need to determine the voltage drop across an inductor under load so you can compute the reactive capacitance of fluxations in the galactic core, the HF model is probably not the instrument of choice.
There is it, Doug. Do you want to determine the voltage drop across an inductor under load so you can compute the reactive capacitance of fluxations in the galactic core?
I've got an Amprobe digital one - 33XR-A I think (without going to go and find it, but having done a quick google). I think it was about 80 bucks.
It handles capacitance, frequency and temperature along with all the usual things you'd expect a meter to do. It's not auto-ranging (for some reason I've always preferred meters that aren't).
It comes with self-tangling leads, just as all multimeters do. ;-)
Asking for recommendations for digital multimeters is like asking for recommendations for calculators. The meters available at retail in your area are going to be different than the ones available in my area and different for someone else's area.
There's no magic meters here. You can buy a meter for a few bucks, to over $100.
Yes, I'm sure Radio Shaft has an acceptible line-up of meters. Might even be consistent across the same region - or even across the whole country.
If you're in California (and maybe Arizona) then have a look at Fry's and see what they have.
Any $10 or $15 meter will be fine for the average home owner. If you want to get fancy, buy one that comes with a temperature probe and use it to impress your guests when you're having a barbecue.
A $40 or $50 meter will be fine for a moderately advanced home engineer / hobbyist.
The boys and I were doing that at NASSA just this week.
At this web page, is a link to a Youtube video. Some of the language (briefly so) is R-rated. But, unkown to me, people in the USA had been doing moon shots before NASA got there. These hard working and courageous people had been ignored because of prejudice and racism. Here, you can see some long forgotten heros of the USA history. Long forgotten, until now.
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Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus
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There is it, Doug. Do you want to determine the voltage drop across an inductor under load so you can compute the reactive capacitance of fluxations in the galactic core?
The botton line is regularity of use and ruggedness of construction. If you're only gonna use it a few times per year, get a cheapo at Radio Shack. If you are going to start building electical kits or trouble shooting your car/motorcycle, house wiring, etc, and end up using it every day or several times per week, spend the money on one that can take the repeated use/abuse.
It's not about accuracy or the most features, it's about reliability. Cheapo meters will not last. The connectors will fail, the switches will short out, the display will become iffy. I know, as I used to maintain production floor tools, including multi-meters, at two high tech mfg companies.
Cheap meters fall apart sooner than more expensive meters. It's that simple. You decide which is most suited to your application and wallet.
I have a Fluke 75 that must have been bought in the middle to late 80s and, other than replacing the button battery at about every ten years, it has been working fine.
Just get the protective rubber bumper and the all the (very expensive) test leads you can find (you'll wish over the next 30 years that you had done so) and a case.
"HeyBub" wrote in news:0L-dncaU19Xlr5fSnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:
Second that. For general-purpose handyman use, those Harbor Freight cheapies are hard to beat. Since they're so cheap, I bought about half a dozen. One in the garage, one in the workshop, one in my toolbox, gave one to each of my sons...
I'm glad you mentioned Micronta as your bench meter. In my original post I said Radio Shack meters, but in fact mine are also Micronta meters that I bought from Radio Shack many years ago. I guess that Micronta was a trade name Radio Shack used at the time. At any rate, I think that I'll have to withdraw my nomination for the shack's CURRENT lineup of meters. I looked thm up on their website, and they no longer mention Micronta. In fact, all their current meters have received truly miserable reviews from customers. So I know that I wouldn't be tempted to buy them anymore. They're considerably cheaper in price than the Micronta ones I bought years ago. Those were in the range of 80 to $100 at that time. JimCo
Yeah, but that is an analog meter. I had one a long time ago, and it didn't last very long. The probe broke, and the range switches soon got to the point where their contacts were so poor that you had to jiggle the daylights out of them to make contact. JimCo
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