consensus on a victor megger?

[deth502]

i have an old amprobe hand crank megger. amc-2, or 3, or 4, i forget. looking to upgrade it to a new style that i dont have to crank, but on a tight budget.

what is the opinion on these?:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/VICTOR-New-Type-Digital-Insulation-Tester-VC60B-/220508865677?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item33575a448d

i use it to test 14 pumps/motors 2x a year, so no heavy use. i know there are a lot of better ones out there, but this one fits my budget. anyone have any experience? it it worth trying?? better model for under $100?? just stick with the hand crank??

[leonerd]

(old thread I know, but...)

I've just received one of these - bought it for £25 on eBay. It's not a bad unit.

It's very "one-function" - it really is just an insulation tester. It does have a nominal 2k "continuity" test range but with a resolution of 1ohm, that's not going to be useful for doing things like earth-bondage tests. The DC or AC volt meter ranges also have a resolution of 1V, and I don't see any indication of "true RMS" on the AC side, so I wouldn't trust it any further than a binary "there's some voltage here" indicator. Also the sounder is terrible - makes a horrible noise and doesn't start up "cleanly" - it sounds a bit squeaky to start with. I'm tempted to try replacing it with a nicer one.

That said the insulation test doesn't seem that bad. I tried it across a few 1Mohm safety resistors and it happily gave me a "1.00M" reading. I tried it across some new cables, and read open-circuit up to 500V. I tried shorting the leads (via a tiny piece of wire just in case ) and it didn't blow up - it indicated a short.

So yeah; I think it does the job. It's really intended to do one thing, and it does that fine. One thing to keep in mind is there's no calibration certificate, and I'm not sure if it would fit any official regulations your country might have. For personal "am I going to kill myself using this equipment?" tests it's fine, but I don't know how far you want to trust it for anything that has official regulations or certification involved.

[leonerd]

Oh one other thing to add - this unit doesn't have a 1 minute timer. Most of the sensible tests to perform on insulation strength suggest holding the DC level for 1 minute and taking the reading at the end of that time. There's no onboard timer here, so you'll have to count that yourself.