Advice on buying a DMM

Buy a Fluke, bite the bullet and pay the money. It will repay you over the years, as long as you use it of course!

The 73 series is a good general purpose range, of the different models within the range, the 73 III is a good starter unit, the 78 series is automotive based, or for more sophistication go to the 83 and 87 series.

HTH

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

[snip...snip...]

The Fluke 73 that Peter mentioned is a good, solid meter, although I think that it has been discontinued and replaced by the 17x series, so you're now pushing $200.

On the other hand, the wonders of modern electronics also brings some cheap multimeters that are "good enough" for many uses. One possibility is this

give-away meter that's "free" for purchases over $50. If you're starting to set yourself up with breadboards, tools, wire, etc you might be able to pick up some needed supplies and get that "$20 meter" thrown in as a bonus.

Disclaimer: Not associated with web-tronics other than as a customer who has scored about three of these meters over the last couple of years. While these are NOT Flukes (they sell Flukes, too) and don't replace my ancient 8050A, the meters are fine for basic functions and are also great for keeping in the trunk, garage, kitchen drawer, office desk, etc. for that odd contingency.

--
Rich Webb   Norfolk, VA

RS Components are still selling the 73 series in the UK, but the later models are also available, so it may be the end of their stock.

The other thing I forgot to mention was the ebay 'specials' that look like a Fluke and have a very similar sounding name. Usually selling in the sub-$20 band, they are basically very cheap and not too accurate, but for £20 or less they may well fulfil the initial requirements of the OP.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

A good multimeter is one of the most basic, versatile, and important investments that ANY techie will ever make.

That being the case, get a GOOD one. Hard to go wrong with the Fluke 70, 80, or 180 series.

Yes, a good one (and by 'good,' I'm talking robust enough to stand up to years of use in terms of reliability and stability) is going to cost you some $$. I bought a Fluke 187 at a ham radio swap meet last year for $135, and I have absolutely no regrets about it.

Prior to that, I owned a Fluke 77 that I bought back when they first came out in the mid-80's. That little beastie lasted me over 20 years, and was still working just fine when I sold it shortly after buying my 187 in 2004.

Don't sell yourself short. I wasn't kidding when I said a good multimeter is an investment. Treat it as such.

--
Dr. Anton T. Squeegee, Director, Dutch Surrealist Plumbing Institute.
(Known to some as Bruce Lane, ARS KC7GR, 
kyrrin (a/t) bluefeathertech[d=o=t]calm -- www.bluefeathertech.com
"If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped
with surreal ports?"

wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

Although you're likely to get a wide range of recommendations from "just get a cheapie that has the basic features" to "get a Fluke that will last for a hundred years", my recommendation is somewhat in the middle. In light of the fact that this will be a learning instrument that will help you get back into the world of electronics, I suggest that you get a DVM that will give you most of the features that you're likely to need for the foreseeable future. AC/DC voltage and current, resistance and diode checks are the bare necessities. There are many very reasonably priced meters that offer lots of other features, such as transistor Hfe, capacitance, frequency and temperature measurements. I don't know of any of the low-priced meters that offer inductance measurement... that is usually reserved for LCR type meters. Take a look at

and read about the model M-1750. It gives you the basics plus capacitance and frequency. The meter at offers the basics plus transistor and diode test, capacitance and temperature. The meter at has capacitance, frequency and temperature in addition to the basics. This was intended to give you an idea of the different models and features available to you if you do some searching. You might not find a single meter that will do everything for you, but judicious choices will give you the best bang for your buck in the beginning. As you become more proficient in electronics, you may want to invest in an instrument with more features (and probably will be more expensive). In the 60's and 70's, I saw many novice musicians who were just learning to play the guitar, get caught up in the excitement, and go out and buy expensive instruments costing thousands of dollars. In the end, many of them found that even a $2000 guitar couldn't make a bad guitarist sound good. I suggest that you start out with reasonably priced meter(s) and advance to more professional models as your expertise and desire to learn progresses.

One last word of advice... no matter which brand or model you select, respect the meter and the circuits that you're testing, and the meter will likely give you many years of dependable service.

Cheers!!!!

--
Dave M
MasonDG44 at comcast dot net  (Just substitute the appropriate characters in 
the address)

Never take a laxative and a sleeping pill at the same time!!

" snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Aks yourself what does lifetime warantee mean. Then ask what does the manufacturer mena by life time guarantee/warantee. Nothing lasts for ever and no company ever backs up lifetime guarantee. You can think about this, history does not stop and there are always better ways to design and build things. That's why next year there will always be a better DMM that will excite the people, ex. Tekronix introduced a DMM w/ the blue holster, w/ 1 yr. warantee. Fluke never backs up their life time warantee. Greenlee has a green holster DMM for around $125.00, works great. Simpson has a range of DMM's. So what.

I've owned Fluke; 77, 87 and now the 85. The fluke 87 broke, I contacted fluke and they said it's out of warantee. I asked what about your life time warantee & I'm the original owner. Fluke says it's not covered by the warantee. So I'm screwed. I took it apart and tossed in the dumpster & kept the holster. The only reason I got the 85 is because it can be sent to a calibration lab and get a sticker put on it, at the company's expense. Your starting out & you don't really need a very expensive DMM. You need 'your brains' to understand the circuit your building, testing, or repair equipment you've never seen before, know how it works just by looking at the board. Go to Harbor Freight and buy the DMM that's $50.00. It can test transistors, the fluke 85 can't. You can build a temp to volt converter, infact fluke used to sell a plugin for that. You take a J or K thermocouple out of a small yellow box with a dual banana plug. So it's a temp to volt converter, at this stage in your game, it's much better to understand how the Temp to volt converter works, build one and use a cheaper DMM to work. It won't be as precise as the fluke, but I bet you it'll be +/- 1 deg. And when you get better at designing circuits, you can't make it

+/- 0.5 % accuracy? You will have to test transistors, so get a DMM that can test transistors. Buy a DMM for $50.00, buy a dozen breadboards that are 7" long by 3" wide? Build a big breadboard panel and start building circuits. The only thing you get from owning an expensive DMM is braging rights that you got money to buy expensive tools. But do you know how to use that tool? Sure, you can test a transistor w/ a fluke, triplet, greenlee, simpson by probing all 3 leads, but how about plugging the transistor into some holes and know it's npn, pnp and read the hfe. What is more useful to you at your level? I have two small $12.00 DMMs that I toss in the car and boat tool box. They are in zip lock bags & they are perfect for everyday use. I still have a simpson 260 with needle movement for analog circuits. I had a $30.00 radio shack that worked for 8 years before it fell over board. Can you image how you'd feel if you damaged that $300.00 DMM and the manufacturer won't cover that damage?

Well, $20 won't get you much, but there is a guy on eBay selling NOS Tektronix 252 DMMs for $25. They are obsolete and unsupported, but the feature set is decent for a beginner. I ordered a couple from him and they were fine, the calibration was dead on.

Don't assume one is enough... for instance, tonight I had three multimeters in use at once on my lab bench, taking measurements on several different parts of a circuit simultaneously as I varied some parameters. I think I probably own 6 or 7 multimeters in total, ranging from "free" ones that came with purchases to the Fluke 87 that is my mainstay. They all get used, often a couple at a time.

The point being, a high-quality meter will serve you well for a long time, but don't let that stop you from getting a meter you can afford right now, you'll end up using both of them.

Even the very cheap meters are surprisingly good. They're not as accurate and not as reliable, but for 95% of what you're likely to do they'll be just fine. And as "headphone" pointed out, the cheap ones sometimes have features such as transistor testing that the expensive ones lack.

look at the LCM-1950 its not a fluke but for what your doing and the price, it has just about every thing in one meter and its only $65.00 with a basic LCR, Freq count, tranny tester. high scale range on Ohms etc..

--
Real Programmers Do things like this.
http://webpages.charter.net/jamie_5

Wade-

Having a good DMM (or VOM) can make quite a difference. When I was a teenager building my own Ham Radio equipment, I saved my money and bought a Triplett model 310 handheld analog multimeter. I believe that was the single most important item I could have had for experimental work in electronics. I suddenly had a new window into the way things worked. My boxes of scavenged resistors and capacitors were shrunk to a handful of each after checking with the Ohm meter range of the new VOM.

In about 1980 I bought a new Fluke Model 8020A handheld DMM. The only problem I've had was a black LCD display soon after the warranty expired.

About five years ago I bought a used Fluke 8012A bench DMM for $35 at a Hamfest. A couple years later I found a Fluke 8050A bench DMM for $45 at a surplus store. (This one had a bad set of NiCd batteries, and possibly one bad resistor for the highest voltage range.) A few weeks ago I found a Fluke 8024B handheld DMM for $5.00 at a pawn shop. (This one was a grimey, filthy mess that I disassembled and bathed!)

Except for one voltage range of the 8050A, all the Flukes have held up well, and all agree with each other well within their tolerances. Manuals for all can be found on eBay, as well as at some Hamfests. For probes, I buy Radio Shack 278-7138 Banana Plug to Test Probe Leads.

My point is that you can get a better instrument by looking for a used one made by a reliable company. Yes, it might be best to go ahead and spend the price of the "ideal" DMM new, but that can wait until you have an income. Others have also made some good suggestions, but buying used is worth considering.

Fred