Hi
I've been reading up on Joe Smiths extensive multimeter tests, they are really informative and educational, a question started to grow about some missing information back in my head along the way, what does the real world use of these meters tell us about how and how often do they actually fail?
So what i'm really interested in is the real numbers/facts about how/why meters do fail when used by the forum users?
Please chime in with your own multimeter fails, please describe type of use when failed and brand/model of the meter.
It would be especially interesting to see how real world fails correlates to Mr Smiths test results... ;-)
With the number of meters sold, I doubt many buyers are on this forum. Of the small percentage that are, I doubt many of them would post. That said, I damaged my first meter several times. Basically, from being young and stupid.
When I was older and a little better educated, I manged to damage my new Fluke meter a few times from small transients while experimenting. These were very expensive mistakes. I bought a cheap 830 that I cracked the LCD. The switch went out in my BK. Loaned out my CEM and the person turned the switch past the dead stop. I have an HP34401A bench meter that must be going on at least 25 years old now. When one of our trees was struck by lightning, it put a transient into the house that took out the meter's GPIB controller.
A few years ago, friends and I bought maybe 10 of the UNI-T UT210E clamp meters. So far, two of them have had the switch start to go bad. These are ones that are actually seeing some use.
I have had people write me about things they have done to damage their meters. These included, measuring the output from a high voltage electric fence supply, measuring a grill starter similar to what I use in my testing, measuring the HV side of an ignition coil. A member on this site damaged their new 121GW with HV but I am not sure we ever found out the specifics. Maybe they will chime in. A few people have measured the current of the mains and posted pictures.
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Thought I should add, one was measuring the electronic gas grill igniter for a cooktop range.
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I posted once about a friend who is a retired master electrician. He told me how he never saw the need for PPE. One day they had to make some measurements and suited up. Two people go in. Friend is holding the meter, man in front has the probe sticks (I understand these were several feet long). Probes were attached and the meter explodes. He figured the PPE save him that day. Of course, this required a fair bit of paperwork and the meter with probes were returned for a failure analysis. While the team that went in were initially blamed, turned out the brand new meter had a fault.
My all time favorite was a Fluke 189 where "The 20KV came from a power supply that drives the final anode on the CRT HUD of the Typhoon Eurofighter."