Yokogawa TY-530 Multimeter Teardown

[aokman]

Hey guys,

Received a new meter last week so i thought i would share some pics of the teardown of the unit. Yokogawa is not one i hear very often but overall i was very impressed with the external build quality of the unit, very solid and no flex in the chassis at all.

The inside is quite good for the price range, soldering could definitely be cleaner in a few spots, shielding is excellent on both front and back. Chassis mount points are plastic standoffs not brass molded, the rear battery cover securing screw is however. There is no sealing around the chassis only the exterior rubber / recessed shields, frame is quite thick measuring between 5.40-5.90mm thick on all sides. I did have misgivings about the input terminals with the frame removed but once assembled they are very secure, fitment of the probes are a nice snug fit with no chance of them slipping out or bad contact.

Still testing the unit on various functions but i am impressed with its response overall and function layout, will report back on more

[aokman]

Pictures of the supplied probes also - Probes are very nice quality, plastic molding towards the tip is removable or can be left in place for additional protection from shorting.

[Bored@Work]

Oh, neon bulbs for overvoltage protection. I haven't seen them used in ages.

But they could have cleaned the board a little bit better.

[Lightages]

It looks to me that the selector dial is going to fail rather quickly. Is it really just a plastic post rotating in a hole in the circuit board?

[jklasdf]

I know this was from a long time ago, but how fast is the continuity buzzer on the TY-530? I have an older yokogawa (an HP 973A, which is made by yokogawa), and it's a great, fast meter with extremely fast autoranging, except for the continuity buzzer is ridiculously slow. I've seen video reviews of the higher end 50,000 count TY-720, and its continuity buzzer is also slow. But in the video here the TY-530 autoranges much faster (similar to the older HP 973A) than the TY-720, and I was wondering if the TY-530 also had a faster continuity buzzer.

I've been searching for a fast general purpose meter with the following characteristics:

• fast continuity buzzer
• dedicated position on range switch for continuity (can be combined with diode test)
• fast autoranging (especially for ohms)
• DC current and voltage by default
• would prefer to have auto/touch hold

I don't care that much about how many digits it has (3.5 is more than enough for general purpose use). I don't care about extremely high accuracy (0.5% basic DC accuracy is good enough for most purposes for a handheld). I have bench multimeters for more precise measurements. I don't care about having a uA range either...say 0.1mA of resolution on the lowest range is good enough.

So far, I haven't found that many options, just the following:

• buy a used Fluke 79 iii (the newer fluke 179 defaults to AC current)
• Hioki DT4256 (extremely fast with Hioki's custom HAZ01 digital multimeter IC, low burden voltage in all current ranges, but capacitance only goes down to a 1.000uF range)

The Yokogawa TY-530 would also meet my requirements if it had fast continuity. There are others I've considered. Most videos I've found of keysight's current offerings (e.g. the u1272a or u1232a) are quite slow, especially for ohms autoranging. Also they don't have a dedicated continuity position on the range switch (similarly for the fluke 87 V, which in addition default to AC current, unlike the series iii and earlier). The Fluke 115/117 do at least have dedicated positions for continuity, and come closer to meeting my requirements, even though they're lower-end electricians' multimeters. They don't have touch hold though, and current is 6.000A in the lowest range. Also millivolts defaults to AC for some reason...

[retiredcaps]

I've been searching for a fast general purpose meter with the following characteristics:

• fast continuity buzzer
• dedicated position on range switch for continuity (can be combined with diode test)
• fast autoranging (especially for ohms)
• DC current and voltage by default
• would prefer to have auto/touch hold

In the used category, the Fluke 80 series I and III are candidates for the above criteria.  The continuity is shared with diode and capacitance though.  The I and III series defaults to DC current.  The 80 series V defaults to AC current.

I don't know what your definition of fast autoranging for ohms is?  1 second? 5 seconds? 10 seconds?  and for what value? 1, 1k, 10k, 100k ohm, > 1M ohm?

[jklasdf]

The Fluke 80 series I and III are certainly nicer than the series V for electronics work when measuring current, since they default to DC current. I really wish continuity mode had a dedicated position on the range switch though. It doesn't make sense that there's a dedicated position for the diode test, but not for continuity, which is much more common to use. I'm sure it makes sense functionally in terms of meter implementation to have ohms/continuity/capacitance be shared on the same range switch position, but it's still kind of annoying that there's an entire dedicated position for diode measurements, but not continuity. At least the fluke 80 series does have two dedicated buttons to select capacitance or continuity (unlike e.g. many Brymen meters, which have a single button to toggle between resistance/continuity/diode/capacitance).

For fast ohms autoranging, my definition would be preferably under a second (maybe slightly longer, but definitely under 2 seconds) for the meter to autorange from open to shorted leads (can take another third/half second or so depending on reading rate to get the final reading after autoranging). Going from open leads to shorted leads usually involves 6-7 autorange steps....Some handheld meters do this *really* slowly (see the video I linked), and take the amount of time needed for a full reading before each autorange step. Even some bench meters, like the Fluke 45 (similar in specs to a high end handheld), take ridiculously long for ohms autoranging in the default medium reading speed. Which is unusual for Fluke, since most of their meters, even an old Fluke 73/75/77 series I/II is able to do the ohms autoranging much more quickly. I think it's an implementation detail, not waiting for a full reading to autorange to the next step if the reading will clearly be below the current range. I can't find a video of the Fluke 45 autoranging in ohms mode, but for more examples of slow autoranging meters, see the video I linked. I know some of the keysight handhelds need to switch a relay in to go between open and shorted leads, and that takes a bit of time.

Anyways I do realize some of these requirements combined together are quite specific (although to me, it seems natural that a good general purpose electronics multimeter should have fast continuity, a dedicated position on the range switch, fast autoranging, and DC current by default). My current go to handheld meters are a Fluke 29ii (which does meet all of these requirements, although the design is a bit dated/awkward having only a single button for every secondary function), and an HP 973A (which is excellent, in most ways superior to the Fluke, and meets all my requirements except continuity is basically a complete afterthought on this meter).

[bitseeker]

I haven't seen a handheld Yokogawa DMM before. Thanks for the teardown.