Thursday, September 15, 2011

Meters

Duncanamps.com seems to have a preference on digital multimeters; quote:

"A *good* quality DMM is required for this measurement. (When it comes to good DMMs, you have three choices...Fluke, Fluke, and Fluke.)"


That's not far off either!
They do seem to have a pretty good reputation. 
I have a Fluke clamp-on ammeter that will do Ohms and DC/AC volts with probes, and it's a nice tool. The one problem with clamp-on meters is that it will only measure properly when clamped onto one conductor. If you try to clamp it onto two wires, you will only measure a little bit of phase shift because the magnetic fields are cancelling each other. This can be quite a problem if you can't get to individual conductors. I can sort of get around that in a makeshift way, but only really for comparison, A vs. B.


One of my projects is to modify a spare circuit breaker with a current sense wire for the clamp meter, so that I can just pull a circuit breaker module out of the electrical panel and insert my module to measure current draw.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please comment, I like feedback!