Hey Joe,
i was one of the few who voted against doing these kind of videos. (Seems like years ago...)
If i could vote again, i would definitely change my answer.
Just wanted to say that your videos are awesome, please keep them coming.
I don't take offense to it and being from Germany, I'm sure you didn't like me showing off your countries top engineering efforts at Gossen.
It's never been a real popular subject anyway but I still find it interesting.
Just a little question regarding the BM869s:
I am using my BM869s to discharge capacitors before working on them(Through capacitance mode). In the manual brymen only states that
large value capacitors should be discharged through an appropriate resistive load. What is your opinion on this?
Best regards,
Tim
My opinion is that your question is very generic. With the lack of constraints as a general rule I suggest you get in the habit of always discharging any capacitor before connecting it to any meter. While I've had some very ignorant people suggest I was directly discharging capacitors into these meters, it's never been the case. Still the tests do seem to indicate that some meters may handle a direct discharge better than others.
For a worse case, you could try it with a DC supply. Say for example your caps are charged to 1kV worse case. You need about an ampere. Roughly 2kohms (PTC + surge rated resistor) with 2X clamps, or 1kV/1kohms. Maybe cycle the meter through all the modes (assuming you will as some point be in the wrong mode when you connect them). If the meter survives this, you should be fine (until you have one charged to 2kV).
Keep in mind, 1kV @ 1A could prove lethal. 1kV may be enough to damage the contacts if you do it live. Dave made a video about this after someone had damaged a 121GW. I made a couple of counter videos to make the point. To get some idea, see the attached video.
Say your worse case was instead 100V. You know I test every function of the meters with a full wave rectified 220V. That's with every function selected. It's killed a few meters but rare. No Brymens I have looked at were ever damaged from this test.