Bloody snobs. There is absolutely nowt wrong with it for household/garage use. Almost as accurate as my old avo and much easier to read. These two will whine of about Flukes with a condescending manner, but take no notice. Take it from someone sitting in a room with more test gear humming away as I speak and more racks of electronic components than Racal, that these little meters do a great job for all but the most intricate electronic design work.
Mark
I was just trying to suggest that too, but you put it into words better than I could. This is the best way to do it bar the 21W bulb solution.
Mark
As Harry and me have said about 5 times now. Putting a 21 Watt bulb in series with one of the meter leads will prevent blowing the meters 250mA fuse, but will not affect low current measurments. These meter are perfectly adequate for household or garage use. I've got a few of them and they are cheap and disposable. They are certainly easier to read when checking battery voltage when I need to see down to tenth of a volt at a glance. Much easier than trying to read my avo sitting on the bench and almost as accurate.
Mark
Why bother. That's the great thing about digital meters, you don't need to bother checking the polatrity.
Alex, this meter will just about read down to 10mA on the 10amp range with a resolution in 10mA steps. Not sure what accuracy is like at the extreme end of this range, but should be adequate for getting a idea of what current drain you are getting. On the 10A range, 10mA would read as 0.01A, 20ma as
0.02A, 50mA as 0.05A etc. Failing this, use the 200mA range and use one of the methods already mentioned to protect the meter from connection surges.Mark
Because it might confuse a newbie?
On one of my cars the immobiliser cuts in when you re-connect the battery
- and it also operates the central locking. That lot will (has) blow a Fluke 10 amp fuse. And you need to let it settle before taking any meaningful quiescent readings. Hence using the bypass jumpwr. A lamp in series might not allow enough current to flow to settle things.
Err, a 21 watt lamp takes the best part of 2 amps so isn't going to protect a 250mA fuse in event of a short.
Given it only states 2% & doesn't tell you how many +-digits are involved the odds of 20mA reading 0.02 are pretty close to zero. Though given you only care about whether or not unplugging a fuse makes it drop then that's not a big issue.
Ah, that's the AC range (AC symbol looks like ~, DC symbol looks like =). That won't give a sensible reading for DC. Measure it on the DC range.
Theo
depends what the op is measuring on the car , most alternators kick out ac until its rectified
"steve robinson" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:
Except the rectification is done within the alternator. The voltage regulator might be external (unlikely on anything vaguely recent), but I've never seen a car alternator with external rectification. Bikes, yes. Cars, no.
Like a said it depends what the op is measuring and possibly what fault he has
i missed the original post
On 12 Dec 2008 11:04:59 +0000 (GMT), I waved a wand and this message magically appears in front of Theo Markettos:
No, you're right I got the symbols mixed up. I did meaure from the DC range.
I can't think of any one where this is accessible, though. And would be meaningless for pretty well everything.
Well if you'd got 12.48V DC with the battery connected then the leakage wouldn't really be an issue.
Unless your testing the alternator and its rectification circuits itself , as i posted earlier i didnt see the ops original post
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Adrian saying something like:
I've seen plenty and they were still available up until very recently.
Are you absolutely sure? Plenty have external regulators, but the diode pack is internal.
Plus the fact that there wouldn't be one AC terminal either - they're usually three phase.
Grimly Curmudgeon gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:
On what?
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Adrian saying something like:
On anything you like. I can't find the info relating to the ones I'm thinking of, but this gives you an idea.
Doesn't show any with external rectification. And I'm not surprised. The diodes pass all the current from the alternator so need to be cooled. Fitting them internally and using the same fan that cools the windings makes sense. If they were external, they'd need a pretty massive heat sink. And heavy duty wiring to and from them.
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