DMM adjusting or calibration questions

[mikem]

hello to all of you.
 my questions will no doubt expose my lack of knowledge in this field of electronics.
my name is Mike, and i am 58 years old. have been in hobbies all my life.........mainly the building and flying Free Flight competition airplanes....picture attached here to give you an idea.
i have always wanted to become more involved with electronics, and recently became in need of a good DMM.
this led to of course the study and referencing of what to buy and also led to a device that i'm sure you all are aware of.....the DMMCheck Plus.
watching a video of the use of this tool was intriguing to say the least. while this is just a start for me, i am very interested and figuring out what can and cannot be done to a piece of test equipment and so on.
while i can understand what the DMMCheck is all about, i would like to ask, are there trim pots inside the average DMM that a user can adjust to bring a value into spec?
by that i mean, if checking a meter for a 5v readout, and the meter is off + or -, is this adjustable inside the meter?
or is this something that a calibration would be needed to acquire accuracy and so on.

[Fsck]

for anything reasonably high end = no, they're closed case calibrations.
low end = highly likely as it's an easy as hell way to trim at the factory.

[mikem]

thank you for the answer.
i believe i will be buying top end DMM, but thought it would be fun to experiment with a couple cheapies to learn from.

i wasn't sure if each function that has an adjustment pot was affected by the other.
nothing worse than making an adjustment only to find that all the other pots would need to be reset to a spec i can't possibly do as a DIY'er.

i will be looking into a course this year to really get into this field further.

i find reading here so fulfilling.
Dave's videos are really educating me, and i love the way he says it like it is.

[retiredcaps]

i believe i will be buying top end DMM, but thought it would be fun to experiment with a couple cheapies to learn from.

A top end multimeter will likely be closed case and you won't be able to DIY calibrate.

You can likely adjust DCV on a low end multimeter, but adjusting it for just one voltage (say 5.000V DC) doesn't guarantee linearity.  That is, you can tweak the pot so the meter reads 5.00, but it may be off at 400mV range or 40V range.

If you are buying a cheapie to play, learn and experiment on low voltage and current (< 30V and < 1A), then get one of those Harbour Freight $2.99 jobs.  Accuracy is hit or miss (one is barely within spec while the other is "bang on" for 5V).  See

http://mrmodemhead.com/blog/gallery/cen-tech-92020-dmm/

Marting has some videos on DMMCheck