review: the one multimeter with inductance

[Dan Frederiksen]

I've only found one multimeter that also has inductance measurement and it's the UNI-T UT70A and since the UT61D did so great in the 100$ shoot out (actually only 45$ on ebay) I thought a review of the 70A might be interesting (50$ on ebay)

it always seemed so foolish to me that we can measure caps and resistor but we need an LCR meter to measure inductors..
inductors are key components in electronics as well so why can't all MMs measure inductance???
maybe a review of this will start a trend among all the meter makers. we need inductance in our meters. far more important than temperature.

[Mechatrommer]

we need inductance in our meters. far more important than temperature.

no! temp is more important. inductor only when you deal with somekind of frequency related circuit, tuning and resonance. but temperature is everywhere, from circuit performance, to sensors to your measurement device stability and to check if you are in fever or not.

[alm]

How well does it do low values (say <1uH) inductors? How much control do you have over test frequency and current? A 'dumb' inductance measurement tends to be much less useful than a straight capacitance measurement, since inductors tend to be much farther from ideal than capacitors. Inductance depends strongly on factors like frequency and core saturation. There also tends to be far fewer inductors than capacitors in your average circuit.

I wouldn't choose a multimeter based on one feature that's likely poorly implemented, the basics like DCV and resistance are far more important, since you use these much more frequently.

[vk6zgo]

Inductance measurement is very useful in determining if a transformer has a shorted turn,which is amost impossible to determine with a resistance measurement.

Of course,you normally have to have a good unit to measure beforehand,so you can take a note of the value of Inductance 
 (& "Q" if the meter shows this) .

You can then determine the condition of any transformers of that type,(& with experience,of similar types).

I would agree,though,that the more standard facilities of a DMM are of greater importance than an Inductance range.

There are many circuits available for add on Inductance (& Capacitance) testers to use with a standard DMM.

I have a Capacitance measuring adaptor for my Fluke 77 which is more useful than the built in Capacitance range of a fairly recent Fluke at my most recent job.

The built in C & L ranges are usually very limited,compared to an adaptor,although they may be more accurate within those ranges.

VK6ZGO