Multimeter dead on arrival?

Question

Hello, a week ago I decided to buy a multimeter from a known brand. Prior to that i just used a cheap chinese one. But i never felt really safe when meassureing voltages around 230 volts, knowing that it might blow up, or electrocute me.

So i bought the fluke t5-600. Now when I wanted to test it I noticed something. The voltage meter works ok. But the continutity says 1 when i touch the leads, shouldn't it say zero?
And when I wanted to test the current jaw (the thing you meassure current with without actually exposing the test leads to the wire) I saw that I just stayed at 0.01. When I turn the deivce on (on the amp settings) For a split second I see it saying 0.0 But after that it just says 0.1 Amps. And when i insert a wire between the jaws (which I know current flows through) it stays at that. For example, I put my wire coming from mais to my computer PSU between the jaws and it stayed at 0.1 when i tested it with a lamp, exact the same result. Am I doing something wrong, or could it be broken?

shabaz · Answer

Hi Vincent, Unless you're qualified, it isn't good to probe around mains voltages. That type of multimeter is for electricians, who deal with AC mains. A value of 1 is likely acceptable for resistance measurement; it means 1 ohm, and that may be within spec, you'd need to check the multimeter datasheet. Similarly 0.01 may be within spec for a current measurement when there is no current. For current measurements, your computer PSU cable won't work, it needs to be a single conductor that is fitted inside the jaws. The computer PSU cable has (at least) two conductors.

jw0752 · Answer

Hi Vincent,

When you use the current clamp you have to make sure you are around only one of the conductors. If you encircle the main and the neutral they will cancel each other and there will be no reading. For example if you take a two wire cord to a lamp and clamp over it the reading will be zero even if a couple amps are flowing. If on the other hand you separate the wires of the cord and clamp over only one of them you will get the 2 amp reading. One other thing to check is whether the fuse in the current section has been blown. If you accidentally probed voltage with the meter set on current the fuse would blow immediately and then would have to be replaced before the current section would work again.

John

Multimeter dead on arrival?

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