Poll

How many cycles will the KeySight U1281A's detent spring last?

0-2000
7 (17.9%)
2k-4k
5 (12.8%)
4k-8k
14 (35.9%)
8k-16k
7 (17.9%)
>16k (most rubust meter ever made)
6 (15.4%)

Total Members Voted: 36

Author Topic: Handheld meter robustness testing  (Read 1149571 times)

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Offline Cliff Matthews

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2300 on: January 13, 2018, 08:13:58 pm »
Is this going to be after wiping down those contacts?
At 100 rotations per ~300 working days a year, what tech wouldn't have used some IPA within 16 plus years of use?
 

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2301 on: January 13, 2018, 08:38:32 pm »
Is this going to be after wiping down those contacts?
At 100 rotations per ~300 working days a year, what tech wouldn't have used some IPA within 16 plus years of use?
That's nothing.  Think about those two people who have posted how they put 10s of thousands of cycles on their meters every year!   In the one case we can be fairly confident that the contacts were never cleaned as they would not take the meter apart to show them in their debunk video.    :-DD 

In all seriousness, if you would have watched the video where I life cycled this meter, towards the very end I mentioned that I took some ProClean to it so we could get a better view of the damage.  I even showed the swabs I used.   Of course, then the meter did some scuba diving and the water was fairly conductive.  So everything had to be flushed out again. 

We know between what levels the first one failed.  That's a pretty wide window if you look at the data.   Somewhere between 5.8 and 13KV.  Which is the whole reason I plan to repeat it.   



 
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Offline Cliff Matthews

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2302 on: January 13, 2018, 09:49:11 pm »
Come to think of it, yes I did see it. So much happened over new-years, guess I've had too many damned "senior moments" to recall..   :)
 

Offline Scottjd

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2303 on: January 14, 2018, 08:31:19 am »
I checked out the meters they offer.  The ADM5201 would have been a good one to try.  Both it and the ADM4201 are listed as discontinued at TE.   Their ADM3201 is getting a bit too much like that ESUN meter I looked at. 

The ADL7103 is also listed as discontinued at TE. Starting to wonder if they make anything.  Maybe the hope is the EEVBLOG branding will save them?  :-DD   They may just not be popular in the USA, like Brymen.
Just be warned about the "discontinued" status at TEquipment: not long ago I saw one product still in production that was marked as "discontinued" on their website. I would always check with the manufacturer first.

Regarding the Brymen/UEI conspiracy theory, let me throw another one: perhaps they are "using you" to increase their perceived value and be bought by a larger TE brand?  :-DD
I forgot to mark this thread as notify. I’m ised to their boards if you reply to something you automatically get notified. Well, and I miss one email in spam and the notify stops also on this forum.
As for tEquiptment when they decide to stop carrying a product line they mark the, as discontinued. Not the cimlnay making it, but the relationship with TEquiptment and the company is discontinued.
They had a problem, more a disagreement with another company last year that still sells and makes scopes, but they dropped the products off the site, marked as discontinued. Even didn’t finish selling the stock in the mains site. Instead they sold the left over stock on eBay.

I don’t know much about TE personally, but heard a lot twice a week from a close friend. I know they sell Brymen and my close friend had an issue with his meter. It was eventually agreed to be sent in, first they couldn’t find the issue, but he said it was intermittent. Then they lost his meter for a month, then they said they found it and sent him a different one, scratch on the screen, new serial number and different issues with that meter. Finally I told him to reach out to Brymen and he did, Brymen solved his issues and replaced the meter. After listinging to his horror story for three months I decided I would never buy fro TE. The might be a good price for most, but if something goes wrong with a defect they don’t want to hear about it or help. He had to fight with them just to get it sent in for service, and he had to pay the shipping to TE and return shipping back to him.
No thanks, I’ll buy local for better support that honors the warranty for a few more dollars, not worth the little savings. I think after the shipping costs he could have bought local also, and he was without a meter for a few months.
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Offline Scottjd

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2304 on: January 14, 2018, 08:40:04 am »
Just be warned about the "discontinued" status at TEquipment: not long ago I saw one product still in production that was marked as "discontinued" on their website. I would always check with the manufacturer first.

Regarding the Brymen/UEI conspiracy theory, let me throw another one: perhaps they are "using you" to increase their perceived value and be bought by a larger TE brand?  :-DD

If I can't find a distributor, as far as I am concerned they may as well be discontinued.  If TE dropped them, I would have to ask myself why.  It could have been anything from lack of sales to poor quality or maybe it really is discontinued.   :-//
That is the thing; at the time the product was being sold by other official distributors and TE decided to drop that particular product line or brand. I can't recall if it was the former or the latter, but I kinda recall something about Siglent. Sorry, I don't recall anything further than that.
Yes, that’s the other company I couldn’t remember. It was Siglent I think the sold off remaining stock on eBay and removed from the main site. I don’t know the details, I’m giessing personal conflict disagreement or contractual agreement. Who knows.
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Offline EEVblog

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2305 on: January 14, 2018, 08:43:39 am »
Crap on a cracker.  I was only kidding when I said the 121GW would save them.

Who said they need "saving"?
Perhaps they just didn't really want to be in the electronics meter business any more and wanted to focus on other markets?
 

Offline Scottjd

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2306 on: January 14, 2018, 10:56:45 am »
I recall Dave even mentioning that UEI already had a Bluetooth stack and protocol designed that they offered to use with the 121GW, so this tells me they already had a Bluetooth meter.

I don't recall ever saying that.

Hi Dave, sorry for the late reply. I didn’t set notify on this thread.
I may be wrong, but I believe it was mentioned in the Kickstarter live stream video talking about Bluetooth, but this video is now gone from the Kickstarter campaign, so I could only reference your channels YouTube video that seems to have been edited with a 20 minute difference in overall video time.
I think it was around YouTube’s video mark of 48:08 to 48:50 seconds (or kickstart time stamp 57:07 to 57:59). But their is also 9 seconds of the Kickstarter video missing that was cutout at the end of this topic according to the Kickstarter video time stamp.

Its hard to say for sure since the YouTube video has been edited, and after that 9 seconds from the Kickstarter time stamp is gone at the end of that topic. So I can’t say for sure if it was in these 9 seconds or not, but I remember the whole topic part was about  Bluetooth. The Kickstarter time stamp goes from 57:49 to 57:58.

So I know my memory isn’t the best these days, but I was watching the live Kickstarter originally. Other parts about that live stream stayed with me more then the Bluetooth stuff.  I remember watching the live stream and the comment on your YouTube video at 49:46 about not knowing if a hardware issue will make it obsolete. It made it sound like no one beta tested outside your lab except maybe Joe with his hardware robust testing.
I thought to my self “maybe I should cancel the order now” since I pledged before you started streaming live. I think you said it’s hard to debug your own stuff, and that’s so true.
Just curious, but was it a UEI non-disclosure agreement that stopped you from sending meters out to a few others for functionality and firmware testing? I know you can have beta testers also under NDA’s, I’ve been under two since I started my channel 2 years ago helping find software bugs in products before they are released. After all, I think this might be the first meter UEI built using the ST microprocessor?

But I still took the risk, now I hope UEI doesn’t take long to update the firmware with fixes for some of the issues discovered. If they do a firmware update, will a beta versions be available publicaly for some to test before the final firmware update is release to all?

And I almost forgot, did you pitch them my idea of dumping the EEPROM calibration data to the SD card before any calibration changes are made as a backup, giving the user a restore point if they mess up the calibration? I know you said it was a good idea, but not sure if they will add that to the firmware on the next release or if they have the space for additional code. Or even how often they plan on doing firmware bug fix releases. But this was more of a feature idea that could help cut back on support emails.
Thanks,
Scott
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Offline nidlaX

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2307 on: January 14, 2018, 11:07:49 am »
Just be warned about the "discontinued" status at TEquipment: not long ago I saw one product still in production that was marked as "discontinued" on their website. I would always check with the manufacturer first.

Regarding the Brymen/UEI conspiracy theory, let me throw another one: perhaps they are "using you" to increase their perceived value and be bought by a larger TE brand?  :-DD
If TE dropped them, I would have to ask myself why.  It could have been anything from lack of sales to poor quality or maybe it really is discontinued.   :-//
Silly TE never bothers to distinguish between products that are actually discontinued or those that are dropped for arbitrary reasons such as disagreements over marketing, licensing, etc.
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2308 on: January 14, 2018, 01:37:41 pm »
If a product is too difficult to buy, I'm not going to go out of my way to hunt one down.
Of course; each to its own. I only found it disingenuous that TE used a term widely adopted in the industry when a product actually ceased to be manufactured. As Dave would say, it was a "dick move".

(...)
One should not discount the other possibility.....that a sales distributorship can be revoked and given to another company.
(...)
Siglent selling rights were given to Saelig.
Thanks for refreshing my memory.
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Offline dcac

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2309 on: January 14, 2018, 02:35:17 pm »
I went with UEi because they said they could do a fully custom meter and were keen.

This is really good to know as I presume 121GW then was built very much to your (EEVblog) specifications and not to UEi's.

Sorry if you already made comments/videos about this - but that might have been privileged to the Supporters launch which I do not have access to.

 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2310 on: January 14, 2018, 02:40:55 pm »
Crap on a cracker.  I was only kidding when I said the 121GW would save them.

Who said they need "saving"?
Perhaps they just didn't really want to be in the electronics meter business any more and wanted to focus on other markets?
It would be strange to find out a company would drop their entire bread and butter product line because they don't want to be in the business only to decided to design and manufacture a custom meter for you.  I can just imagine the story behind it.   While I previously said they may need saving as a joke, you have adding a new twist.
You are right; it would have been strange but not unheard of.
Actually, looking at their page in the US website, it shows only the model 393 as their active "Digital Multimeter" - all others are discontinued. If one looks only from this angle, it looks like they are more interested to be an ODM or are looking for a comeback to the "electronics DMM segment".

We can only wonder...
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Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2311 on: January 14, 2018, 03:41:13 pm »
You are right; it would have been strange but not unheard of.
Actually, looking at their page in the US website, it shows only the model 393 as their active "Digital Multimeter" - all others are discontinued. If one looks only from this angle, it looks like they are more interested to be an ODM or are looking for a comeback to the "electronics DMM segment".

We can only wonder...
Maybe it's just one person who is leveraging their previous contacts?  :-DD  Maybe they will contract with Brymen to produce the UEI meter..  :-DD 

Speaking of Brymen, the third meter is getting some time out in isolation, or insulation.   
 
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Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2312 on: January 14, 2018, 11:34:00 pm »
Well, at least I know the brand, which is a bit more about the mysterious box than before... :P
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Offline IanB

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2313 on: January 15, 2018, 12:48:14 am »
Well, at least I know the brand, which is a bit more about the mysterious box than before... :P

The box was shipped directly from Brymen...what other brand was it likely to be?
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2314 on: January 15, 2018, 01:21:51 am »
Well, at least I know the brand, which is a bit more about the mysterious box than before... :P

The box was shipped directly from Brymen...what other brand was it likely to be?
Perhaps I missed that post or did not pay attention to a photograph previously posted.
In one of the pictures, there are two Brymen boxes of meters that Joe owns on top of a mysterious cardboard one. I really think it could be anything.
« Last Edit: January 15, 2018, 01:24:46 am by rsjsouza »
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Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2315 on: January 15, 2018, 01:56:24 am »
This meter has lived a long life in a very short time.   If you don't think Brymen knows how to make tough meters, think again!

https://youtu.be/zIKSUqs0Lks

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2316 on: January 16, 2018, 03:35:49 am »
I have started life cycling the last Brymen's rotary switch.   Not that 600 cycles means much but in the following, you can see the EM129 and 830B were already past an ohm!  The junk meter was doing better than them.   As you look down at the lower resistance levels we can see the ZT102 is starting to move a little.  So is the U1231A.  Not much but it's there.   Then we get into the next class of meters.... 

Only 57 hours to go assuming nothing goes wrong.   
 
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Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2317 on: January 16, 2018, 12:33:10 pm »
A bit over 8000 cycles so far and the the last Brymen is looking pretty good.   Not a real surprise when you consider we are looking at a product built by a company who runs these tests as a practice. 

The top graph is showing all the meters I have looked at, clipping at 50 ohms.  It looks like a big mess so let's hide everything but the Kasuntest, HPAK, Fluke and the two Brymens.   It's not a lot of data yet but just like the transient testing, we are already starting to get a pretty good picture. 
 
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Offline Kean

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2318 on: January 17, 2018, 11:46:59 am »
Joe, I'm sure it is mentioned somewhere earlier in this thread, but what resistance are you measuring during this switch cycling?
 

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2319 on: January 17, 2018, 01:13:12 pm »
Joe, I'm sure it is mentioned somewhere earlier in this thread, but what resistance are you measuring during this switch cycling?

The switch contact resistance.
 
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Offline Kean

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2320 on: January 17, 2018, 01:21:11 pm »
I imagined as much, but wanted to be sure I wasn't missing something  ;D
 

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2321 on: January 17, 2018, 01:52:23 pm »
I imagined as much, but wanted to be sure I wasn't missing something  ;D
I wasn't sure if that was what you were asking.  So yes, the some of these cheap meter's contact resistance goes well over an ohm in a very short number of cycles.  We now know Brymen runs cycle testing but I wonder how many other companies do.   

It's too bad we don't get to see companies put out more videos about their testing.  I would like to see videos showing a handheld meter going through the entire safety and EMC testing.     They could make it live with a chat, Why are you putting 5KV into the meter when it clearly shows it is only rated for 600 volts on the front?  Why are you directly discharging capacitors into these meters?   I hooked my meter to the output of a MOT and it stopped working, can you tell me what went wrong and how to fix it?  Can you show me how to protect my meter against these sort of things,  I'm educated and know what I am doing?   :-DD  Never mind, it's a bad idea!   :-DD   Still though, just showing the testing like Fluke has done for some of their internal tests would be very educational.   


Offline Cliff Matthews

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2322 on: January 17, 2018, 03:22:21 pm »
Joe, not that I'm trying to batter with questions here, but do you have criteria for which contact to choose? My hunch on the numbers is that distance from the vertex may affect settling times (say, measuring during a detent sliding contacts into a rest position). I'm confident you're measuring during actuator pauses, but does your sample delay increase if a meters sample point is farther out on the radius?

Also, what have you noticed in general about meters with double contact points (ie: not just resistance, but track wear depth and fragility?)

** Edit: eg: meters similar to this one..
« Last Edit: January 17, 2018, 03:26:03 pm by Cliff Matthews »
 
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Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2323 on: January 17, 2018, 05:45:21 pm »
Joe, not that I'm trying to batter with questions here, but do you have criteria for which contact to choose? My hunch on the numbers is that distance from the vertex may affect settling times (say, measuring during a detent sliding contacts into a rest position). I'm confident you're measuring during actuator pauses, but does your sample delay increase if a meters sample point is farther out on the radius?

Also, what have you noticed in general about meters with double contact points (ie: not just resistance, but track wear depth and fragility?)

** Edit: eg: meters similar to this one..

Let's start with your question about the multicontact wiper.  What meter was it that I looked at that had this design?  How did it perform?   I think if you answer that first question you may find your answer.    That said, if you were interested in large studies, I would look towards the automotive industry and the US military.   I would recommend looking at variable resistors as well to learn about it.   I certainly would not gleam anything about the contact designs or lubrication from the little testing I have done.  I do believe we are seeing some trends in the quality of the switch based on brand but even that is too early to say.

About the settling time.  You are correct in that I do not attempt to read the resistance while the switch is in motion.  The motor does have a settle time and it detects when it is done moving.  I also wait a fixed time and then the meter itself has to settle out as well.  But when you only rotate every three seconds or so, there is plenty of time to let things settle.  There would never be a reason to try and speed things up.  It's not a sprint, its a several day marathon.  Again, running them too fast, you may find the plastic will start to build heat.  It's interesting to see how fast and how many cycles Brymen runs compared with my swag. 

Offline Cliff Matthews

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Re: Handheld meter electrical robustness testing.
« Reply #2324 on: January 17, 2018, 07:44:52 pm »
By swag, you mean the Metrahit produkt? :-DD  So you select the set of traces with fewest via's then?
 


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