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Any bench meters with USB ~$400?

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saturation:
They used to be, but not recently.  

A lot are made in China in the past 10+ years; if your unit is a 2000 variant it could be US or Taiwan; its easy to find, check the label.  I think those 2015/6 are from 1998.

Do you really mean your 6.5 digit DMM outputs 8.5 digits?  ???  You actually have a 5V source stable to 100nV?

Nice, then.


--- Quote from: paulpthcom on December 08, 2010, 02:09:12 pm ---I'm pretty sure all the Keithley stuff is made in the US, maybe not the 2100 series, but at least all the higher end stuff.

Honestly the 2016 is a 2000 with audio bits tacked on.  I very much doubt I'll ever use any of the audio bits, though it does have a built in (slow) signal generator that will probably come in handy.

It's a really nice piece of equipment very nice hooking up a 5V reference and seeing it output 4.999999x.

--- End quote ---

paulpthcom:
I didn't count the 9s on my reply.   ;)  It's 4.9999x

This one is made in the U.S.A. says so on the back.

alm:
Nice deal. Being able to buy locally and test before you buy is also worth something.

I think the lack of proper low-end bench meters is mainly because handhelds have gotten pretty good. Bench meters were more popular when handheld DMM's didn't exist, or only offered 3.5 digits of resolution with mediocre accuracy. Now they're mainly for exotic measurements like high accuracy / resolution, high speed or automated test setups. A bench meter with similar specs as a HP 34401A with just 4.5 digits of resolution probably wouldn't be that much cheaper, you still need an ADC that can do 1kS/s instead of the 2S/s or so that a handheld does, and more expensive case, front panel and power supply. If you drop the speed, you lose all customers doing automated tests (eg. testing all states of a DAC). I know companies that upgraded from an Agilent 34401A on every engineer's bench to a 34410A for the 10x increase in reading speed (1kS/s -> 10kS/s), which means they can measure a DAC in minutes instead of tens of minutes.

I like bench meters even when I don't need the high accuracy/resolution, because of their form factor (handhelds don't stack well), bright display and infinite power source. Something like a Fluke 289 would probably need to have its batteries replaced fairly regularly in the same setup, same with the Agilent OLED one. LCD without continuous backlight (power issue again) is also much worse than LED or VFD, if power draw is not an object. Even backlit LCD usually has a much worse viewing angle than LED/VFD, at least the ones in most DMM's. VFD is not suited for pretty graphics, but excellent for just displaying text in my opinion.

I would be a potential customer for good, relatively cheap 4.5-5.5 digit bench meters if I couldn't get them for <$100 or so used.

saturation:
A sweet deal, its meets everything you initiall specified plus a really good quality older Keithley.  Happy for you.

I concur with alm's post, I look for high accuracy in bench meters: 4 wire ohm, 6.5 digit types at the minimum.  I would love to have speed too, as is possible.  So I've been happy looking for viable HP 3456a, which can range between $50-120, uncalibrated.

I wonder what those companies upgrading their 34401a to the 34410A do with them?  They maybe slower, but they're faster than the HP3456a and near the same general specifications  ... their eBay prices are high, they start typically $300-500 working and not recently calibrated; the 3456a is a poor mans 34401a.



--- Quote from: paulpthcom on December 08, 2010, 04:53:26 pm ---I didn't count the 9s on my reply.   ;)  It's 4.9999x

This one is made in the U.S.A. says so on the back.

--- End quote ---

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