Products > Test Equipment
Price increases of test equipment
salvagedcircuitry:
Keep an eye on the 34401a multimeter. They have been officially discontinued after ~32yrs of support. No more support. No more help, nothing from Keysight. All serious US labs will start pulling them from their labs as they are now too old to keep in continued service. I have seen more 34401a multimeters on ebay 2022-2023 than in the past several years combined. I can imagine there will be many at liquidation auctions and those will work their way onto ebay. Good luck.
J-R:
The 2001M now shows up when searching for "keithley 2001", maybe they adjusted the listing...
I've heard the gripes about the 2001, mostly about being noisy compared to the 2010. I read the xDevs article about the 2001M (https://xdevs.com/review/kei2001m/) when the ebay listing went up, but xDevs didn't seem to do any performance tests so I'm still a bit unclear currently in what ways the 2001M might better due to the hardware tweaks. There is a short blurb about the resistor dividers being glued together to help with temperature stability.
What are the "disappointing points" of the 2001?
Will be interesting to see how the 34401A prices behave if they are being pulled from service, but on the flip side I wonder if many have been replaced already.
jimjam:
What are the chances of prices going down - has that ever happened in the past?
What would be the cause? Maybe when this chip shortage ends?
zrq:
If 34401As may have been replaced already, the patient ones can also watch out for 34410A .
The recent appearance of the huge batch of cheap 2001M on ebay may be just because they just got pulled out from service at a big guy.
I have little reason to believe 2001M is doing significantly better then ordinary 2001 from the teardown. I just take M as a marker for more recent production, most recent firmware and less likely for seeing a leaking cap spoiling the PCB. Given the 2001Ms are produced much later then the first 2001, I have more confidence that Keithley got more experience with this model and can engineer it to conform to the specifications drafted years ago.
To me the disappointing point is the noise. It can give one a high resolution reading (<0.1 ppm full scale) rather quickly, but more NPLC or averaging will not help to gain one more digit. Maybe for some users without GPIB adapters and need more support on the software, the computer and user interfaces are also less attractive compared to newer models. Even Keithley 2000 have a RS232.
J-R:
Based on the xDevs article, the K2001M has many differences from the regular K2001:
- RMS-AVG - firmware feature, strongly points to the "M" being military as they love average responding DMMs
- SMD film capacitors C557,C553
- optocouplers replaced with daughterboard
- К300 relay replaced with shielded relay
- Upgraded/glued resistor divider R607
- "transistors Q550, Q552 next to guard circuit driver U331"
- new ADC module
I do wonder how many differences are solely due to the "M" design vs. just a newer version of the product. Does anyone have info on later 2001 non-M models?
With regard to the K2001 noise, it seems it can vary between different units. Also, the K2001 is limited to a maximum of 10 PLC, so adding a 10 reading filter for an effective 100 PLC is suggested and appears to perhaps limit the noise to the 9th digit in 8.5 digit mode.
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