MS8340A, good for beginners ? Review + Teardown

[Rbastler]

As my first post in this forum, I want to show you why I was and still am surprised by the MS8340A.
I bought this DMM around two or three years ago from Pollin: http://www.pollin.de/shop/dt/NjE0OTYxOTk-/Messtechnik/Messgeraete/Multimeter/Digital_Multimeter_MASTECH_MS8340A.html.
It costs 45€, which would be 49.6 USD or 65.6 AUD.
The first time I got this, I was surprised by it's form factor. It is much bigger then I imagined. At that time I dindn't really care much about the performance or how secure it is. But that changed with time and after discovering Dave's Youtube channel I opend the MS8340A and was surprised to find some of the things Dave mentioned in the videos.
The DMM has deep ridges for blast protection on the battery and fuse compartment witch can be opend without taking the meter apart, as long as the meter itself. The meter is powered by 4 AA batteries.
As far as the protection goes, i'ts very good for the price I would say. I have never seen something like this in a meter in that price range. But unfortunately only in the current section. On the Volt, Ohms etc range, there are only some PTCs.


I think this meter could be a good supstitute for the UNI-T 61. As a beginner I would buy the Mastech rather then the Uni-t.
Now that I had this meter for about 3 years or less, it's lifetime is coming to an end. More specifically the one of the input jacks. They are of course split tubes.
The DMM I bought after the MS8340A is the Fluke 177. Since then I only bought one not Fluke handheld meter. The Unit 210E clamp meter, because of the 2A range. Which means for me, that the MS8340A is a nice meter to begin with, but not if you do more advanced stuff and want something to rely on and that the meter lasts you lone time.

I made a quick comparison with the Fluke 177 and the MS8340A is less of then I expected. Both of them can't light white LED, but the MS8340A can measure up to 10Mhz in frequency, where the Fluke 177 only can measure up to 100khz. Current and AC volts are still in specs of the MS8340A too. But the continuity tester is as slow as it was on the first day i got it. Too bad that didn't got better with time .
As "test equipment" I used a 5V voltage reference with a AD680 and a ICL7652 as amplifier, a 1k 0.1% resistor and a 100n styroflex capacitor.

[retiredcaps]

Some comments.

1)  At first I didn't see any pictures, but when I went to reply, I saw  that the site http://www.bilder-upload.eu is being identified by ublock origin (my blocker) as a known malware site.

2) What is wrong with your input jack?  Is it not making a solid connection?  Which one?  I uploaded and resized your picture so everyone can see without having to risk getting malware.

3) If your input jack is bad, perhaps it can be replaced with a spare somewhere?

[Rbastler]

Thats new to me, that this image hoster has that problem... I just reupload the images then with the forum hoster. My experience with forum hosters so far wasn't really good, so I started using external ones.

The ground and Volts/Ohms input jacks are the problem. They don't make a solid connection anymore. I have some cheap banana sockets for monatage on a panel, that I could use for the purpose. Some modification would need to be done, but it could work.

[retiredcaps]

The ground and Volts/Ohms input jacks are the problem. They don't make a solid connection anymore. I have some cheap banana sockets for monatage on a panel, that I could use for the purpose. Some modification would need to be done, but it could work.

Modemhead has a blog entry about repairing Fluke 80 series input jacks.  Perhaps it will give you some ideas and inspiration?

http://mrmodemhead.com/blog/fluke-80-series-jack-assembly-rebuild/

and

http://mrmodemhead.com/blog/fluke-banana-jack-repair/