Freaky Amazing DMM?!

I do not agree with MT often, but he is correct here.

The low impedance only dopes are undereducated, and the folks that know how to use their tools to ensure that proper data is recorded is in the right.

No, it will NOT. It MIGHT arc INSIDE the meter, BUT can only last for the duration of the transient, and NO meter is protected to that voltage, you retarded twit! Sure the meter will be broken, but "blow that meter to hell" is pretty much stupid misinformation.

Ya, you are bare assed alright. Shame one of those transients did catch you in the ass, right where your brain is. Oh... that's right... it appears that one did. That accounts for the stupidity.

More total bullshit.

Then the idiots at the IEC and ANSI wasted a lot of time developing standards for modern meters used on high capacity circuits. If they had only consulted you....

Safety experts disagree. Somehow I trust them.

It=92s the patented Archimedes logic. Your namesake would be proud. But why do you want your logical masterpieces erased after only a few days???

When they vaporize there will be less metal to condense on the electrician.

Transients, far above the nominal circuit voltage, can break down a meter that is not designed to handle them. Transients are more likely to be present on high capacity circuits. Result - internal arcing and rapid circuit reconfiguration in multiple directions.

And although you never make mistakes, mere humans do. Cat rated meters are protected in the case a mere human tries to meter on the wrong range.

If you were familiar with modern safety practice you would know about both.

Using a meter that is not Cat rated may only result in your wearing the meter. Or, if you are less lucky, the failure can propagate back to the switchgear.

Arc flash is a serious enough problem that it attracted OSHA. That is arc flash at =93low voltage=94 - below 600V. The defacto standard for worker safety is NFPA 70E ( a cousin to the NEC which is NFPA 70). A major piece of 70E is arc flash protection. Why does 70E require =93low voltage=94 electricians to wear arc flash suits in some environments?

You are out of touch with =91current=92 safety practices. What a surprise!

-- bud--

Even easier for Arloe.

It=92s the favorite nobody-knows-anything-but-Michael argument.

Not the issue, of course. Any tool can be used. The question is what is appropriate and efficient. High z meters do not help you on power circuits, but you can use what you want. Arloe is entirely reasonable to use a low z meter.

-- bud--

"rapid circuit reconfiguration"? Is there anything that you do not make up some lame phrase to describe it? A meter which experiences an arc internally where it should not be will most certainly fail. That's not a 'reconfiguration' you retarded f*ck, that is termed as a 'failure mode' or a 'catastrophic failure'. I wouldn't expect a twit like you to know what the word mode means, however. Either way, your description isn't one.

You are a VAPID circuit reconfiguration.

I made on, thinking that you have half a brain.

How would you know, since you do not qualify?

Modern meters auto-range, you retarded, Chinese cheap shit f*****ad.

I have used meters on 50kV before, floating.

A test circumstance a pussy like you doesn't even have the balls to try, much less LEARN how to perform. I know EXACTLY how to meter ANY source, fucktard.

You are so stupid, you likely do not even know what Fluorinert is.

Or, in the case of experienced users, WILL only result in a proper and safely obtained reading being taken.

You're an idiot... A complete retard. I have seen high capacity lines dancing on the street before. *Those* current spikes made it to the switch gear. A failed DMM would not even make a single event that matched any one of those arcs dancing on the roadway, and very likely would appear as a mere glitch on the switch gear, at best.

You act like someone is throwing a 2 inch diameter Copper bar across the taps. Sorry but the are no meters made that react like a 2 inch Copper bar when they short an AC source. Perhaps you should re-examine your claims.

Because they are painfully aware of the average IQ of the majority of electrical workers involved in such activities.

No. I know them quite well. I also know what is required to perform a given operation.

You are like a QA inspector with no education, who only inspects things by looking at a picture of the finished item. All you can do is quote chapter and verse, but your actual hands on knowledge appears to be nil.

Are you an office fucktard that sits at a drafting table doing estimations?

Yes. And the copper MELTS and SPATTERS, it does NOT "gasify" then "condense", you clueless, make it up as you go twit.

If you are hooking up meters ACROSS a source on amps settings, you need to have bad things happen to you to get you OUT of an industry you have no business being in. Just like flying a passenger jet, there is no margin for retarded mistakes, and to say that it just happens doesn't mean that the person that does it is not dirt stupid as it relates to his chosen field, REGARDLESS of any scores he got in his schooling of it.

ALL modern meters have cat ratings these days. D'Oh!

You are EXACTLY just as retarded as I knew you to be. Condense that, dumbfuck.

Anyone who isn=92t already familiar with arc flash may be interested in:

=93This massive energy discharge burns the bus bars, vaporizing the copper and thus causing an explosive volumetric increase, the arc blast, conservatively estimated, as an expansion of 40,000 to 1. This fiery explosion devastates everything in its path, creating deadly shrapnel as it dissipates.=94

Geez - that=92s what Arlowe just wrote. And what I said.

And vaporized copper will condense. Some of it can condense on an electrician. Like the one I know that it happened to.

You have no clue what arc flash is. Explosion. Searing hot gas, metal vapor and radiant heat. Shrapnel. Blinding light. Deafening sound.

Shit happens.

So do transients Arlowe cites transients of over 3kV. A Cat IV nominal 600V meter is protected for 8kV transients.

Only in the alternate universe where you live.

You are stupid. You do not know the limits of what you know. You are not willing to learn. Just like Roy.

-- bud--

Any retarded twit that gets near power transmission lines with a handheld meter deserves whatever he gets, regardless of the from it takes.

Proof that its easier for him?

You are starting to sound like your hero, the cut & paste 'surge protector W_Tom'.

Arloe can use anything he wants to. No one else cares, but a lot of what he posts is old wives tales.

Bullshit. Prove me wrong.

It is not uncommon to read mains voltage, not some BS 83VAC like some have referred to, but MAINS VOLTAGE on a conductor that is isolated.

When you have a panel where the active cables are segregated form the neutrals, you can get very strong, alternating magnetic fields depending on the current draw.

If you put an isolated cable in that field you will measure voltage on that cable with a DMM. An electrician can not rely on reading an "incorrect" voltage as an assurance that the cable is dead. He has to be able to PROVE IT. Some will use an analog meter, I don't, I use test lamps that have the correct CAT rating for the enviroment. I follow up by testing my lamps on a "known supply" ie. a supply that I verified live before I performed any testing, just to prove the test lamps are functionimg as intended.

Call it crude, I don't give a f*ck, it works, it is failsafe and it is fast.

bud-- wrote in news:e5611cbd-ea3c-4de1-88dc- snipped-for-privacy@v18g2000pro.googlegroups.com:

He whom I killfiled long ago is persistently reminding me why I killfiled him. And he's wrong. And when he gets a fine red-gold-black coating across his face sometime he'll know how wrong he is.

That's about the size of it. It only happened to me once, and it wasn't even that big, it was just the ends of some 100A cables burning back from a contact, lasting about half of a second. I'm a civilian, but that's about as close I know to the experience of being shot at by live rounds at close range. It's a deeply shocking experience, it makes reactions poor, instead of reversing the move that caused the event, a stunned brain only registers a failure and retries the SAME move! Never mine autonomous seizure in case of electric shock, neural shock DOES this without the added woe of electrical contact. It took a real effort of will to override my body's false assumptions and prevent a third blast, and it taught me something of what soldiers have to learn to do in combat, so they respond correctly. I'm lucky I remained standing and didn't shit myself, and equally lucky I have good eyesight remaining after being flashed at and coated with enough copper to make my eyes sting for days. If the whole cable had gone up it would have probably slammed me against the wall and broken my spine and fractured my skull. As it was the sound was like the most brutal and guttural swearing, it carries an emotional weight as well as just being very loud. I know this is just the brain trying to rationalise its experience, but that's my point, even in mild form like that one, arc flash at many tens of amps is a STRONG experience.

I had a lesser one that did nothing to me, but still shows the power. It was two fully charged industrial deep cycle 105AH 12V lead acid batteries in parallel. I managed to let one wire drift and gently pass its end across the side of another one, and there was no resistance, just a complete destruction as one passed through the space occupied by the other. In this case the arc was just weak enough that some sputtering occured instead of total plasmafication, but there was a lot less copper bits than were eaten out of the cable, so even there, most turned to separate molecules of copper oxide and vanished in the ambient airflow.

I wrote this because I'm annoyed with the claim and counterclaim, flame and counterflame. It's MY experience, and no-one, whatever they say, is going to be able to contradict it. Hopefully no-one's going to try.

I know that a high resistance input can be interpreted across a known load, but I also know enough not to argue against assertions that meters made to do this are both safer and more convenient. I just use a Fluke meter and some load I have to use if needed, but I don't have to do this every day. If I did, I'd make it pay for the meters that do it as I'd need it done.