multimeter upgrade

[peterthenovice]

can you add a fuse in a multimeter on the 10 a line

[4to20Milliamps]

No.

Are you trying to measure a higher current?

use one of these:

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/ecatalog/N-1z0dwmz

[amspire]

can you add a fuse in a multimeter on the 10 a line

Decent multimeters have a fuse on the 10A or 20A current input.

If you have a multimeter without a fuse, I would just buy a new multimeter. Most half decent multimeters from $30 upwards should have a fuse.

If you only need the fuse for low voltages, any of the cheap multimeters would be fine.

If you need fuses with full CAT III or CAT IV rating for 300V to 1000V, you probably should be looking at paying a bit more for a quality brand.

[c4757p]

It's always impressed me that the fuse they leave out is the one for the higher energy range. I understand that it's the more expensive one, but it's also the one that gets used around mains.

I have a cheapo meter where they didn't even put a real fuse on the low current range - it's a damn polyswitch. Stick mains up that and see how long it blocks current... 

[M. András]

during zero crossing?

[Neilm]

It's always impressed me that the fuse they leave out is the one for the higher energy range. I understand that it's the more expensive one, but it's also the one that gets used around mains.

They leave it out as fuses have quite a large (and very variable) resistance. Given this, they find that the cheap fuse is so poor it adds significantly to the voltage burden of the meter as they are also using quite a large value resistor to measure the current.

Decent fuses cost money. Meter is cheap.

Many moons ago I did do a test with a cheap meter in current measuring mode connecting across a 600V supply. I can't remember how many kA the supply was but the resulting explosion was impressive.

Neil