Long story short the Micronta meter is nearly as good as new today, and I still use it regularly. Not that it mattered, because back then 5% tolerances for electronic components was considered top notch. It wasn’t like that extra $1185 was buying greatly enhanced accuracy / precision either. In 1980 the cost of a new, basic Fluke DMM was the equivalent of $1200 today.
Some 40 years ago I purchased an inexpensive Micronta brand (Radio Shack) meter, hoping that it would keep working long enough for me to buy a Fluke.
Fluke multimeter free#
Is your harbor freight free coupon meter good enough to use in a industrial application (probally)? is it fine for troubleshooting your car or checking xmas lights or a wall outlet, its actually overkill If that wasn’t amusing enough he returned with a fluke china clone, so apparently if its not yeller n brown its garbage.įinal point being is that 99.999% of DMM’s are only going to be exposed to light duty tasks, does anyone NEED an expensive meter to eyeball kids toys, arduino’s, car batteries, or even household voltages … no, in fact you dont NEED an expensive meter for almost all of handheld meter needs, outside of working on the power grid or a train station. THEN you fall into the trap of “only professionals” bullshit, to the point where at one time I was troubleshooting my furnace and my HVAC “professional” neighbor came over and was like all “woah there cowboy be careful with that cheap meter” … yea know my cheap Tektronix meter. Some of the lower end modern fluke’s are not even as good as a fluke, which is telling me they are falling into the weller trap, where their name dictates they can sell a 6$ soldering iron wired to a lamp dimmer for 60+ bucks … cause yea weller. That said, I do not hold an electrician’s ticket, so I’m legally not allowed to touch >120V DC or >60V AC unless it’s the RF stages on a radio transceiver (for which I hold a radio license). It’s nice to know there’s been effort on the physical safety of the device. How do the el’cheapos compare on this front? If I bought two el’cheapo meters, are they likely to both read about the same or are they going to give me two wildly different answers? How close would either be to a “quality” meter? Those do see the business end of LV circuits on a regular basis, so there’s good reason to do this.
The Fluke meters at work get regularly re-calibrated. I doubt it’ll get calibrated again, so I expect over time it will drift off those original figures, but compared with an el’cheapo, probably still competitive. I don’t have the equipment to verify that calibration, but for what I use it for, it seems to be on the mark. It came with a calibration sheet to show that it had been factory calibrated. The only thing I miss is the ability to read current, which can be achieved with a current shunt and some maths anyway.
Fluke multimeter manual#
It was chosen because it could do manual ranging as well as auto-ranging and had Sigrok support if I want it. I have a Keysight multimeter which I bought to replace a Digitech-branded meter that broke down (basically a part on the rotary switch broke… one of these days I’ll raid the filament at HSBNE for a replacement part). Posted in Tool Hacks Tagged aneng, fluke, multimeter Post navigation The cheap meters are certainly good enough, even though you do get what you pay for, as you might expect.Īs long as you have a meter open, you might as well hack it to have WiFi. Of course, if you don’t have a few hundred volts running through your meter, it probably doesn’t matter. The Fluke also has a significantly larger number of protection devices and heftier components, you presume can take more punishment.
Fluke multimeter Pc#
The Fluke also has a proper rotary switch, while the cheap meter has a switch that is etched on the PC board a cost-cutting trick that’s often a point of failure on these cheap meters.
In addition, the Fluke has an internal case that helps keep you away from live voltage. The initial opening shows that the Fluke has hefty brand name fuses, but the Aneng has little generic fuses. For comparison, he opens up a Fluke 26-III and an Aneng AN870 (retailing at about $500 and $30, respectively).
When talks about cheap meters, he always says, “If you are doing this for a living, get yourself a Fluke.” But he realized he’s never shown the inside of a Fluke meter, so he rectified that in his most recent post.
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