Not sure if you have already but you should maybe show this on your channel now when you have become one of the big guys on RU-vid. Could potentially save lives :)
I found your video on my playlist after watching another Chi Con multi meter blow up. At first I felt duped that I’ve over paid for the Flukes that I own. But really now, one Fluke is much cheaper than the injury or death I could receive
I'm am electronic technician from the Philippine my fluke 115 meter is my meter everyday to repair then 5 times mistake to measure I checking to AC but my fluke is set to DC setting then after plug my fluke meter never blown thank you so much fluke corporation for this unvlibable meter yes very expensive the fluke but the quality and performance is so amazing I'm glad to have this meter thank you so much fluke🙂♥️♥️♥️
I have had an industrial grade Beckman digital meter blow up when there was around 440VAC on a circuit that was supposed to be low voltage milliamps. Since then I have always used a Fluke. My current Fluke is a 87 By far the best meter I have used in a 50 year career in electronics.
Last week I was testing a high voltage circuit, for an error I move a selector from 700 volts to 2500 volts, with my fluke 28 series 2 conected. Surprise noting happen, my multimeter works perfect, without any problem, I test all the funtions and everything is correct. I have a lot of Fluke multimeters and ever is the same, good thing only. 33 years ago I see the first Fluke "love at first sight" and the love history never end. Cheers.
FYI - "OL" does not mean Over Load - It means Over Limit (It over the limit for the function you choose) - That OK, Everyone says Over Load - It sounds better, But FLUKE Corp. says Over Limit
Good video martin, that really opened my eyes to the fragility of the cheaper meters. Not many experienced engineers would switch across ranges while still connected to a circuit but accidents happen and if it does you would wish you were using a Fluke or equivalent type. The Video example was like holding a firework. The other day I was watching a video from AvE (If you haven't watched him, you should, quite funny and very informative) and he quipped that the CE mark was 'China Export ' and not the safety mark you would expect. I thought it was just his humour but it evidently turns out to be true. My Goodness, the Chinese are out to kill everyone or at least that is what it seems. lol
So had anybody noticed that the cheap-o meter was rated for CAT I ? And you test it under higher CAT ratings which doesn't even match the original design purpose to say those products are bad? You guys kept blowing those meters, but it wasn't even designed for measurements above CAT I, it's only designed for electronic and breadboard measurements, not mains or high energy situations. Volt surges used in electric and electronic standards has specific and strict waveforms say 50/250us surge. Not every surge generated by a high voltage capacitor or some 25kV transformer is convincing enough, they just want to spill shit on those Asian-made products. Flukes are good indeed and I have to admit that the cheapo-s do feel bad, but testing a meter above its designed protection rating to prove that it's unreliable? Rediculous, and its just not fair. Those cheap-os are quite handy and useful when used with breadboards and low energy circuits, but when it coms to mains and high energy you shouldn't chose them at all. Just stop those meaningless and unfair comparisons, its entertainable to watch, but not very useful.
I have a couple of those cheapo meters but i only use them for working on cars and other 12 volt stuff. I don't even use them for 120v ac. The only reason I have any of them was because I was caught out away from home and needed a meter to diagnose an issue on a vehicle and just needed basically a disposable meter.
I bought my first Fluke 70 Series second hand when i was poor and 18...I,m 62 now and that meter still passes calibration every year! YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR! I was so poor i couldnt afford the rubber holster for another 10 or so years!
I think it was a similar meter i used to check the battery in my car. It was on the proper setting i think it was 20 v DC. A small bang and that was it. But what do you get for 12 dollar nowadays.
So if you put a better fuse in the cheapo meter (fuse honestly probably costs almost as much as the meter) will it help with a cheap meter (i know its cheap) so is it the fuse or the circuitry ?
Hi thx, when you say these basic meters are ok for home use if not using in high voltage or current settings. What are you considering high? I'm going to use mine for home use only in Canada so we're 120V here, I don't yet know what the max current is in our homes here though?
Hey would you consider checking out the Sinometer VC97 which looks like it's the same as the Victor VC97 you reviewed earlier? I'm only asking because it was given as a gift and I noticed it had True RMS on it. There doesn't seemed to be much on it on RU-vid and I was just curious if there was any true change to it or is it really just a repackaged Victor VC97. Thanks :)
I like Fluke DMMs and I own one, but the demo is so lame...why does he not uses a meter with more specs like model 115? And the explanation with the 1kv fuse is also lame because that meter from his hand is a 113 model which does not have fuses! It is the front-end protection (ptc, mov, gdt, hv resistors) which will prevent a dmm from blowing up when applying high voltage in wrong scale.
Also the Fluke rep said about the meter that blew up that on the front it may say 10A/250V and 600mA/250V so at 1st you'd think the fuses only need to be rated to 250V. However since the meter could read up to 750V [I think] he said that it should have a better fuse - was he saying each should be rated to 750 or 1000V in case you select ohms when you're measuring volts. Is that what will make a cheaper meter safer? And I think he said something about having a fuse rated at 20kV [is that referring to how fast it blows?] So should we use higher voltage rated fuses? And with a kV rating too? Thanks. And I'm just using my meter at home checking for stray current/ poor wiring in my house.
In Sweden we've done a fair bit of high-grade electronics the last couple of decades and we have rigorous testing to say the least. We've always relied on the CE marking for knowing that the stuff is going to be safe to operate, as has all the other European countries, and we have suffered badly from the dodgy CE - aka China Export - markings the last couple of years. Many people here look for the CE marking and think they are safe and now there's so much crap on the market that we have started to wish for a new certification. Of course a new marking can be forged, and that'll always be the case, but at least they be pulled by customs when the shit travels around the world because the Chinese have gone and made their own "CE" ever so slightly different and they claim that it only stands for China Export and nothing else if asked, thus getting away with it... I've bought some Chinese dodgy electronics only to have a look inside to see when people actually use - and trust - today and the horrors I've seen... Whenever I buy something electronically today I take it apart prior to usage simply because I don't trust any supplier any longer! (unless bought in trusted store at full retail price) I'm sure there are fake Flukes out there as well. Thank you mjlorton for a great and informative video! I already knew about this since long ago but too many don't :( p.s In the past consumer electronics, as well as industrial, used to be marked with an ISO certificate number. I wonder why that disappeared? EU lesser rules perhaps? That used to be way more important than any CE marking.
+Jens Andree A lot of warranties are voided in your household then I guess! But yea it's definitely a deceptive thing, I'm usually a bit skeptical unless I buy a name brand item that has proper certification at retail (or slight discount with promotions) from the right type of supply chain. Obviously I can't verify the supply chain of a company but at least you can have reasonable confidence in a store that mainly deals in that kind of appliance category to have their shit sorted out or they'd probably be caught. Ordering from vague internet webshops, ebay, amazon just about pretty much anything not the authorised resellers for a name brand is taking a risk imo.
I own some test gear from Fluke. Almost no product (apart Fluke 101 which is made for Chinese market) is made in China. Ihave 3-4 multimeters and 2 scopemeters . All multimeters are made in US and one scopemeter is made in EU. I would accept that for Keysight which are made mostly in Malasia (not China) but not Fluke. I think their prices are descent specially for products made in US and Europe.
+Jack Toff Now I'm going to do some guesswork because I've never really tried it myself, but based on a car battery that can deliver quite some amps at its not too high voltage since it is intended for car starting I would expect a very dead meter/leads functioning as fuse when you have it on the wrong range. You might get a small fire and probably some melting plastic somewhere a long the line if there's without proper fuses. But a violent reaction like in this demonstration seems unlikely because the resistance introduced by the testleads themself and a non ideal connection will probably limit the current enough to kill the meter and seriously overheat/melt some crucial bits and if you leave it long enough a fire but I don't think it exceeds that level of risk. The problem with mains or tests like the fluke guy demonstrated in the video is that you've got higher voltages, they used proper low resistance leads (which you want anyway if you're doing anything to do with measuring currents!) and thus the major point of failure was the meter. A key point is also if the thing powering your device under test has the capability to crank a lot of energy into the system or not in case of a short, a typical car battery is somewhat limited in that regard compared to say mains or higher levels of energy that show up in places with heavy machinery/closer to the mains distribution or high voltage lines.
+Extra stuff Correct. Power = current * voltage, so increasing the voltage, assuming the load stays the same (around a few milli-ohms in the case of a short circuit using cheap multimeter leads), will increase the energy of the explosion. A 12V car battery will melt the leads with a few hundred watts. A 600V AC source will melt the meter with several thousand watts, and possibly send shrapnel round the room.
Thanks I really enjoyed your video and didn't realise that safety should also be taken in consideration when selecting test equipment. I will be sharing this with my colleagues. I recently bought Uni T clamp on meter and Uni T 563 compliance meter. Have you heard of them and how do they compare to Fluke.
It's the users duty to check the product before he buys it (do your research) And I think that my life is worth more than the 600€ I paid for my Fluke 87V
Well, this is an old video, so I doubt many will read this, but just because it's Fluke doesn't mean it's safe. As an industrial electrician, we had more needs for Testers than Multimeters. The old standard was Ideal Vol-Con Testers, the solenoid type, required no batteries for voltage readings. We had systems where various voltages were to be found, including 120V DC. The Ideal Tester measured its range of voltage without needing to be set to AC or DC. I've seen a few Multimeters with AC/DC ranges, where they showed potential, nice setting for our job. But the Ideal Solenoid Based Tester input impedance was too low, and certainly at the time wasn't Category Rated. We bought Fluke T2 Testers. Then, one day, a recall was announced. These T2 Testers required its circuit to be powered to work. If you followed good work procedures, you'd tested it on a known source first, then found out the batteries were dead, or not making contact (the latter is the reason for the recall). The next model Tester, Fluke T3, had Battery Compartment Springs improvements and a LED that remained on for several minutes if the leads were touched together for Continuity or if the Known Source Test was properly done before use. But Fluke created a design that was flawed, and could have caused injuries and fatalities to anyone not observing the test on a known source. The newest Fluke Voltage Tester, last time I looked, shows voltage on LEDs even if no batteries are installed, and another version has voltage indicating LEDs and a digital readout.
Interesting I've always used the fairly cheap units. I use them on mains on occasion or measuring some power source. If I need to be totally sure something is dead I'll probably go with a neon lamp tester. So far, the highest end meter I've got is a mashteck. It's got a fuse, etc so should be fairly safe. Although sometimes it won't turn on or you get some absolutely BS reading like 75ohms for the leads connected directly together. I think it was like $35, most the cheapy units last 5 yrs or so, I have analog units too so for now I'll keep using the Mashtech. I have a relative I have no idea where he got it, but he has one that is fairly beefy, although mostly basic features it also has a no contact volt probe built in. I think it's a Sperry brand.
Robert Calk Jr. I agree if you need to trust your life with it or you need something super accurate. A couple times I've thought about just choocking that up as a $35 lesson. For the bulk of my work, it does fine and justifying $100+ unit seems silly. If I need something verifiable or I trust more I'll parallel it with an analog meter or use an analog. I have an old Anolog amprobe and Mura multi meter that work well. I still have some old simpson meters that the range values are all off because resistor decay. Last I tested one or more higher V range was like 5V off and If I need that one I just have to calculate that in. (I thought Simpson was a good brand, my best guess is maybe since these are like 30+ yrs old and have wore out.) Only real special use for it is that it will do up to 1KV DC otherwise I may have just thrown it out. (Decided I should add this; Yes if you do a lot of high power/ accurate work absolutely get a Fluke, Extech, Kiethly, etc. If you have a more trustworthy backup and rarely need that then a cheap one may not be so bad besides more tools and work.) I had one Keithley bench unit probly 1980's model I was given used like 6 mo went to measure the output of small step-down transformer was in AC and set to the like the 140 range to be safe and something popped and it all just went blank. Fuse and everything looked fine inside it. I'm not sure was a surge, meter age-related issue, but the price for Keithley gear and seeing that I'd probly avoid them for high-end meters.
If you, as a company can't afford those costs, you surely can't afford the costs of researching, designing and producing products worth of the true CE mark. The standards are in place for a single reason only: to ensure the safety of their users. Obviously, for the chinese, the human lives are very cheap if they resort to such dirty tricks...
No you can't, because there is no such thing as "CE certified", and anywhere you see that phrase or wording, you will KNOW it is fake. It is the responsibility of the OEM to deduce if a product is compliant with the applicible CE directives, and then mark the product as such. The only products that have to be done externally by a "notified body" are things like nuclear weapons and certain biological materials etc. This is all publically available information.
@@digitalradiohacker Let me rephrase : you can have your product tested by a external company to see if it is conform to European standards which it should be for CE marking, but you are not required to have it tested (internally or externally).
Not a fair test on a meter that would mostly end up only measuring dc upto 20 volts for most of its life, most people use them for battery and fuse testing. If you are so incompetent at operating a very very simple multimeter then you are the danger, not the multimeter. You have to have a modicum of intellegence to know the limits of cheap test gear, if you havnt then dont use cheap test gear!!
pepper669 I agree about the printing, but most ordinary home users dont really know about cat standards, but i will say as long as its ok up to 240v then that covers what most diy users will need to test. In the 30 years of using cheap multimeters ive never once had a problem measuring mains voltages, and never had any multimeter explode, i base my judgement on typical voltages not rare "possible, might happern" values. I do agree that no cheap multimeter should be used above ordinary home mains voltages, industrial models would be needed for anything above 240v.
zx8401ztv I'm new to electronics - it's my new hobby and I enjoy it very much. After a lot of consideration (and watching lots Martin's and Dave's videos) I went for a Fluke 85 V that I could pick up for relatively little in used but perfectly working condition. And I'm (almost exclusively) using it on low power applications. Overkill? Maybe. But apart from safety considerations I enjoy its build quality, its reliability, its speed and all the nifty and very practical features it provides. Just the fact that I can turn that sturdy dial at any time without fear feels satisfying. And the test leads! I'm keeping my el cheapo multimeter though, as it might come in handy later :) .
pepper669 Im not knocking fluke or any higher protected meters, i just think the danger of getting a shock or explosion is less likely than the panic masters say, but thats just my opinion :-D You have a smashing multimeter, and it will serve you well :-), and in the billion to one chance you get a voltage high enough to hurt you, then the fluke should prevent that. Your old cheap meter will work fine for general stuff, most things you need to test/fix have low voltage ac/dc of typically no more than 50-100 volts, unless your building something special. But keep in mind that no protection system can protect a user from misuse of test gear, like say connecting your meter to an anode cap in an old colour tv at 35,000 volts, so you have to use common sense. If you measure high voltage say 250v then connect the meter to the test points via clips and dont hold it in your hand, then switch the mains on and observe :-) Just common sense lol :-D :-D
zx8401ztv Common sense surely helps! I'm not expecting 10'000v surges coming down the lines of my humble 5v circuits... I agree: No built-in safety measure will protect me from being an idiot ;). If I'd hook up my Fluke to a fully charged car battery and tried to measure amps without any load, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it got very hot after a short while (until the expensive fuse hopefully blows), since the shunt resistor inside has very low resistance and I'm basically shorting it. Panic masters? Maybe. But if I buy a common light switch and it says "230v" or "240v" on it I do have a right to not being electrocuted by it (unless I'm using it in the bathtub). A recent trip to our diy supply showed me that people have no clue: Not only do their multimeters look and feel cheap, they also lack auto-ranging and decent test leads (not to speak of the innards). Plus they're overpriced for what they are (~CHF 80, about the same in USD). And I'd guess that they're not even tested. A 10 or 20$ meter would be fine if it said "Low voltage only - 30v max." on it. I'm sure one can pick up a decent, safe and not-too-expensive meter from Bryman or other brands. It doesn't have to be a Fluke but I like it :) .
While I appreciate that Fluke meters are going to be better than most, it annoys me that struggling organisations have to conform to standards set by private companies that are only in it for the money. How about the government setting up non-profit organisations in the public sector? This way we can avoid the profits being reaped by unscrupulous people.
"Say you're making a measurement of 120 volts, and the outside line gets hit by lightning, all of a sudden you're going to have a big impulse coming down your mains connection, so measurement instrument has to be protected against that impulse." Statistically you're more likely to die in a plane crash moments after learning that you've won the lottery.
+John Smith I suspect, however that surges from switching, inductive loads (motors and transformers), and other sources, particularly on an industrial site, are a far more likely source of the surges that these devices have to be able to survive. Getting struck by lightning while measuring the output of a wall socket is *not* the problem.
Nobody stops you from testing with a cheap chinese crappy meter. Don't come complaining when you're fried to a crisp... Or would you propose every electrician stops working inside just because there's a storm outside?
Nobody stops you from testing with a cheap chinese crappy meter. Don't come complaining when you're fried to a crisp... Or would you propose every electrician stops working inside just because there's a storm outside?
Nobody stops you from testing with a cheap chinese crappy meter. Don't come complaining when you're fried to a crisp... Or would you propose every electrician stops working inside just because there's a storm outside?
That cheap multi meter is for students comparing it with fluke wow. If they have the balls, they should compare it with their competitors or something of equal price. No one in their right mind will use that cheap meter in possibly dangerous scenarios
What a FLUP ... (FLOP). Compairing a 5$ to a 150$ multimeter... And it's just rong saing that the safety is achieveded by that big fuse, when it is just for Amp meter, It wil not protect on Ohm metering and other mesurements except Amp.
