Products > Test Equipment
Mastech MS5308 LCR meter with ESR measurement - on discount at the moment
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mrubbert:
And iam sorry x 10, i start to like the meter very much and have around 8 devices to check dissipation factor. Also NOT funny to get email answer from seller " check battery " . In the end i think i will a get new unit. So its warranty issue.

Heard from other person that had similar problem: when push "startbutton" 12v will go to voltage regulators and out to the board, the small IC got 5v and the big IC and around it only gets 1.2v. Something is pulling it down. And he thinks its regulator curcuit or IC,  also he dident try cut of delivery to IC.

People shoud be careful with putting on Powesupply when meter is on battery !
Specially with that shitty original build PSU. No warnings in manual either.

The killing thing must be more like bad revision on PCB, sensitive to transients or something, how shoud i know.
 Come on mastech this can be a winner.


alm:
I got my hands on one of these a while ago. This post is based on my recollection.

It had the same problem of inaccurate resistance readings when on AC power as reported by John. Replacing the power supply with a 12 V linear wall wart fixed the problem. One of the on-board voltage regulators, either the 5 V or 3.3 V regulator, were specified for up to 8 V input, 10 V absolute max. There were a few diodes in series with the power input, but the voltage at the regulator was above 11 V. I installed an 7810 (with filter caps) between the DC power input and main PCB. This appeared to work fine, apart from the battery level indicator showing only two bars when on AC power.
mrubbert:
Sounds like your recollection is spot on.

The other guy told me he got 12v in to the regulator, Pin1-1.2v pin2-12v pin3-12v on his meter. He didnt se any 3.3v anywere. Great Mastech !

Just wonder how it can survive battery 12.5v, maybe the diodes in series you talk about is zener that keep the voltage down.

Many thanks.

PS.
The PSU will hang on chrismastree next year and its not importent, i did or do like the meter it self.





Smokey:
So what is the consensus at this point about this meter?  Messing up the voltage regulators is pretty amateurish.  I had very little faith in Mastech as a brand already and it doesn't sound like it's getting any better.  But on the other hand, this MS5308 seems to be the goto meter that people recommend over the only slightly cheaper models using this same seemingly capable chipset.  At 200USD this really isn't a new toy impulse buy anymore where I don't care if it doesn't work as expected. 

Is this MS5308 still the best in this price range and feature set?  What is the next step up, and not just build quality but also feature set?
kripton2035:
actually the top in its class has been discussed in eev forum - it seems to be the IET DE-5000 - but arround $350
the probes accessory are important and the low end meters have crappy probes.
you need 4 wires probes to make real measurments on an lcr meter
they all use the same chip, I even found a "copy" here in france for 120 EUR...
http://www.ietlabs.com/de5000-lcr-meter.html
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