On my 175 series you have to select the beep.
It really annoyed me that such an expensive meter was supplied with PVC rather than silicone leads. And that it came with only basic prods. And they then have the nerve to charge about 40 quid for decent leads and crock clips. Especially since much of their stuff is now made in China.
Git :)
It's permanently enabled on the lowest range on both of mine. Bah.
Yeah, and I bust tips on leads with depressing regularity (usually doing automotive stuff). I've found croc clips in cheapo stores which seem to work well though, but decent leads with tips seem to be expensive.
The darn self-tangling feature drives me nuts :-)
cheers
Jules
On Sun, 4 Oct 2009 17:54:15 +0100, bof had this to say:
At one time Avo used to make a meter specifically for 'electrical' as opposed to 'electronic' work (ISTR that it was a variant of the Model
7, BICBW) - it was something like 500 ohms/volt, giving much more sensible readings. This meant that the movement could be much more rugged than usual as well, so it could be dropped from the top of a stepladder (almost) with little damage.
From my point, I might be adding confusion by not expanding on what I was measuring.
I had to avoid modern digital volt meters when I had to measure the aircraft flap and slat asymmetry detector pot voltages. These are 3 phase and are fed at 110 volts, 400Hz. The object of the exercise was to adjust the pots to the lowest voltage at a known point of flap and slat travel, then reconnect them to the aircraft. They are there to freeze the control surfaces so as to not allow one wing to be out of symmetry with the one on the other side, by killing the drive mechanism stone dead.
What I found, was that due to the high input resistance, the meters picked up residual voltages in other circuits, thus making the readings over voltage. In this case, the asymmetry detection was quite happy to see the same voltage from both sides, but the lift dump (spoilers for landing) and the spoilers for flight worked in the opposite sense.
Another problem with some digital meters is that they provide a resistance when trying to measure the current drawn by a circuit. The current is dropped by the meters internal resistance. Because of this, I use an old Avo Minor to measure current drawn, an almost as old Tandy multimeter for general use, a not so old digi meter for continuity, cos it has a tone output and a modern cheapo digi for anything else.
I hope you understand most of this.
Dave
Many years ago, I made up lots of leads for my multi meters. They occupy a 1/4 of a drawer :-) Big crocks, small ones, probes that are thin and pointy, ones that are fatter to take the current, ones that can be clipped onto the old style TTL chips, live.
Has anyone seen clips that can be used on surface mount devices? Do they exist? I don't mean those that clip onto all the pins at the same time.
Dave
I've got a cheap meter for car stuff. The Fluke stays in the workshop. To be perfectly honest a 20 quid one will be just about as accurate as the Fluke. But won't have that lovely tactile feel to operate.
The Fluke reacts to the wrong leads by giving inaccurate readings of very low resistances - which is a pain if continuity checking.
I try to stay well clear of surface mount. ;-) I'd guess RS would sell them if anyone does.
In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes
One of my proudest moments is when I was working on the sales desk (actually, I was the sales desk) at Fluke and someone phoned and asked me why he should spend more than twice as much on a Fluke meter as on a noname unit. I listened carefully to what he needed and advised him to buy the cheap one.
My sales manager would have been livid if he found out but old man Fluke would have given me a pat on the back.
A 20 quid DMM is highly unlikely to be as accurate as the Fluke but may well be accurate enough.
And there was me thinking you actually worked with electrons professionally.
Then perhaps you'd explain how a high input impedance meter gives a different reading from a low impedance one on mains - as per this thread?
Model 40. Took 3ma FSD or 1.5ma with the button pressed for extra sensitivity. A right PITA on anything electronic other than high power stuff!
IIRC model 7 and 8 took 50ma FSD. I've got the bits of one in the garage so I might look it up.
One big advantages of avos was the kack of fusing, but a re-settable cutout which tripped if the pointer went supersonic. Sometimes it tripped spontaniously which was a PITA.
Well, once I get all my stuff shipped across the Pond I will have two, so I suspect one will stay in the garage (neither are Flukes btw, sorry if I gave that impression. My current US one is an Amprobe and it took me a considerable amount of time to shop around for one that had exactly the stuff that I wanted - but sadly non-tangling probes and a beeper disable didn't appear in the feature list ;)
cheers
Jules
On Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:07:40 +0100, had this to say:
Microamps, shirley?
Yes they exist but they are fragile and eye-wateringly expensive.
Yup!
If the volts really were up at 295v RMS you'd never be able to switch an incandesent light on without it going flash, bang, dark and I suspect there would be an awful lot of escaped magic smoke floating about as well...
Your meter is lying for some reason.
In the end, as mentioned here, it was the 9V battery in the meter.
With a new battery, the reading is now 225V
The circuit boards that failed were due to moisture after heavy rain. When dry they came back to life. An improved sealing of the outdoors junction boxes where they are contained and some dielectric spray should prevent the problem from happening again.
Many thanks for your help.
Antonio
asalcedo wibbled on Saturday 03 October 2009 14:41
Did you get to the bottom of this?
Maybe not. In Norway they have three phases but no neutral. Each house gets all three phases. In each room of the house the sockets etc. are connected between one pair of phases. There is 240 Volts between phases and therefore a lower voltage between any one phase and earth.
THis had the amusing effect (when I lived there) that you could blow one of the three fuses and then find that pluging in an electric heater in one room made the lights work in the next room!
Robert
R
Many years ago, after reports of a hairdryer making odd noises when plugged into a socket at a French camp site, I checked with my multimeter. Both conductors measured 220 V to the earth pin, 380 V between conductors. They had actually connected two phases to the same socket outlets. Fortunately there were some outlets without earth pins which were OK.
I decided that my technical French was probably about as good as the camp proprietor's grasp of three-phase vector theory, and kept quiet.
Chris
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