Multimeters for Hvac techs

[slimm]

I am an electronics hobbyist who works as a commercial HVAC technician. I have seen the youtube $50.00 and $100.00 shootout and have learned a lot. Also I have suggested young technicians view the eevblog videos on our talk forum www.hvactalk.com ----Any chance Dave Jones could review a line of Multimeters by Fieldpiece? They make meters just for HVAC technicians. I mostly work with 480 volt 3 phase power so safety is a big issue for me.

[PetrosA]

I've seen Fluke and Extech DMMs and clamps (sometimes both, as a kit) marketed for HVAC techs. I'm not sure what you'd need that most decent clamps or DMMs wouldn't have. I'm guessing you need or would want a thermocouple, inrush current measurement and CAT III 1000V/CAT IV 600V, so I think most decent meters would work fine for you. Am I missing anything?

That being said, I think for clamps you would be happy with clamps/DMMs from:

AEMC
Agilent
Amprobe
Extech
Fluke
Greenlee
Hioki
Ideal
et al.

[BrickBoiler]

Slimm, I'm also a commercial HVAC tech. Same thing for me, its all about safety.
I see a lot of the guys using the fieldpiece meters, but I think it's mostly because they are less expensive than fluke and available at the supply house. They all seem to like them though. I had one a long time ago. Manual ranging with only a weird 2A current range (glass fuse). Eventually the little plastic shrouds in the jacks popped out and one of the probes cracked in cold weather. It's in my junk box now, they don't even sell it anymore so the new ones might be better.

Are you looking at getting a DMM / Clamp meter combo or just one of the all-in-one style clamp meters?

[slimm]

Only recently has Fluke produced meters branded for hvac. Fieldpiece has been making hvac meters for over a decade. Also if I have an issue with a Fieldpiece product I can ask Russell Harju (big shot at fieldpiece) right on the hvactalk forum and get it resolved quickly. Fluke is owned by Danaher (huge corporation that makes Craftsman,Kobalt and dozens of other products) and My business is not that important to them. Micro amps (one millionth of an amp) is one feature a lot of meters do not have and 4-20 ma for control circuits also.

[McPete]

Check out the Fluke 116. It's got a thermocouple (type K) input, plus a µA range for doing flame sensors, plus all the usual mod-cons for volts/ohms/diodes etc... No current ranges besides DC µA though. If you need to measure AC current, I'm sure you could pick up a basic clip-on current transformer quite cheaply that'd do AC current at least as well as cheap tong.

 If you can hang the expense, grab an 87V, or a Yokogawa TY530. Maybe check out Agilent too? I'm not so familiar with their range.