So I have had my eye on an extech 530 as my main meter for a while, but yesterday I went to home depot and picked up a Klein MM200 for about $50 bucks to use as a secondary meter when accuracy isn't as important. The major reason I bought this thing is because I am working on a digital solder station and I needed something capable of reading 1000 degrees +.
Last night is the first time I used the meter, I noticed the func button looked a little faded but everything else was packaged very nice, so I don't believe it was a return. The meter works just fine so far, except on the temperature setting... I plugged the thermocouple in so its negative prong was in the COM jack and its positive was in the V/uA/nA jack. The problem is the thing always reads in the 70's with or with out the thermocouple plugged in. I compared the temp reading to a .5% DS18B12 (i think thats the model) sensor, and it was only a few degrees off. I then stuck the tip of the Tcouple under my tongue no change, and just now I touched the shaft of a 30 Watt iron and still got a 77 degree reading. Does it sound like the meter/thermocouple may be faulty or is there something I am missing? I've never had a meter that did temp before, I tried hitting function on the temp setting, but it did nothing.
it soulds like the input to the meter is dodgy, that or the thermocouple is open circuit,
to test this, leave your probes in instead of a thermocouple and short them together it sould dramatically change the reading, if it does not its the meter input,