Products > Test Equipment
Keysight's new 34465A (6.5 digit) and 34470A (7.5 digit) bench multimeters
6thimage:
--- Quote from: AndyC_772 on March 05, 2015, 10:03:45 pm ---Guys... long day at work followed by the arrival of a new toy. Of course I've been playing!
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We don't blame you one bit, just remember you don't have to tweak all the settings in the same night :P
If you do want to just play with it, remember you can always reset it to the defaults when your done, or even set the multimeter to start up in its default state.
On a bit of side note here, you can save the multimeter's state and tell it to use it at start up, which I find really useful as you can change the trend chart so that it automatically fits the data.
AndyC_772:
Had some more time to play now, and it's all good... mostly :)
Auto-ranging on the 2W resistance range does take a few steps to go from open circuit to correctly reading shorted probes, especially if they don't make really good contact straight away, and the meter tries some intermediate ranges before settling on the 100 Ohm range. It's OK if the aperture is set to 1 PLC, but on 10 PLC (the next available step up), it takes a while.
I spent a while yesterday looking for the red grabber, which I was sure should have been included in the test lead kit. I was going to give Keysight a call today to say it was missing, but having looked at the included accessories on their web site, it turns out you only get a black one (WTF?!)
So hooking the meter up to, say, log current for a period of time unattended is impossible unless you have a substantial enough clip already. And guess who wanted to leave it logging the charging process of a 12V lead-acid battery overnight |O
(Seriously Keysight, that's just being cheap, even for you!)
On the plus side, setting it up to log to USB was dead easy and worked first time. I'm at a bit of a loss as to why anyone would pay for the MEM upgrade, when the 50,000 point limit of the standard meter doesn't apply if you're logging to a file on a USB stick. I checked this morning; 70,000 points taken at 3msec intervals, no problem at all.
Has anyone else noticed the noise from the fan? It's quiet, but quite high pitched and... whiney. Maybe it's inevitable, what with the fan being so small, but it's irritating nonetheless. Fortunately the radio drowns it out easily.
The probe tips needed a good clean in order to give consistent resistance readings; a good wipe with a paper towel soaked in Flux-off rosin flux remover worked wonders. They still feel a bit low rent compared to the TL175 set that came with my Fluke 289, though, and really hoped for better with a £900 multimeter. Some Kelvin clips for the 4W resistance range would have been nice too; you don't get anything at all to perform 4W measurements.
Amazingly, you do get a USB cable, but no Ethernet cable, and no printed manual. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Overall impression? From a usability point, a bloody good meter, as expected. I've no way to check its accuracy, though I've no reason to doubt it's anything other than superb. It's a shame that the accessories aren't more plentiful, but that's much easier to fix than any deficiency in the meter itself.
Also nice to see is that my Agilent 6632B set to 5V outputs +5.00008V, and in CC mode @ 1A, I get 0.99968A. Good enough for a general purpose bench supply :-DD
6thimage:
--- Quote from: AndyC_772 on March 06, 2015, 10:13:16 am ---I spent a while yesterday looking for the red grabber, which I was sure should have been included in the test lead kit. I was going to give Keysight a call today to say it was missing, but having looked at the included accessories on their web site, it turns out you only get a black one (WTF?!)
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Yeah they include a black grabber, and a red and green mini-grabber. I always assumed that the black grabber was meant for a ground connection. The mini-grabbers will hold onto quite a lot, so it might be worth trying them. I've never found the black grabber all that useful, as it only has a 90 degree bend in it. It would be more useful if they provided some grabbing hooks.
--- Quote from: AndyC_772 on March 06, 2015, 10:13:16 am ---On the plus side, setting it up to log to USB was dead easy and worked first time. I'm at a bit of a loss as to why anyone would pay for the MEM upgrade, when the 50,000 point limit of the standard meter doesn't apply if you're logging to a file on a USB stick. I checked this morning; 70,000 points taken at 3msec intervals, no problem at all.
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From what I've read, logging to USB is limited to 100 hours (which I'm told is a maximum of 360 million readings). I have been reliably informed that once you go above the 50,000 point limit, the trend chart reverts to the recent/all mode - essentially making it so you can't use the cursors or zooming controls. Also, the digitising mode only works with the internal memory, due to its speed, so people who use that might want the extra memory.
--- Quote from: AndyC_772 on March 06, 2015, 10:13:16 am ---Has anyone else noticed the noise from the fan? It's quiet, but quite high pitched and... whiney. Maybe it's inevitable, what with the fan being so small, but it's irritating nonetheless. Fortunately the radio drowns it out easily.
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The fan in the 61A isn't too bad, it's a little noisy, but I wouldn't say high pitched. You could always swap it out with another small fan if you really wanted to.
Is there any chance of you taking the cover off and snapping a few pictures? I'm sure there are a lot of people (like me) who want a glimpse of the reference and the changes they've made.
LabSpokane:
Save yourself a lot of frustration and shitcan those supplied grabbers now. They are just flimsy, malformed crap.
AndyC_772:
I'm inclined to agree; I've seen worse, but they certainly don't feel like the quality items I'd expected.
The black one was a good fit for the 12V battery I charged last night. The mini-grabbers didn't look up to passing any current, so I used the Keysight to log voltage instead, and recorded current with my Fluke 289 instead. The Fluke's leads and accessories are much nicer.
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