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Blog Keysight Technologies U1282A Digital Multimeter - Teardown Research
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  • Author Author: dougw
  • Date Created: 5 May 2016 4:58 AM Date Created
  • Views 1669 views
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  • Comments 5 comments
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Keysight Technologies U1282A Digital Multimeter - Teardown Research

dougw
dougw
5 May 2016

The Keysight  U1282AU1282A Multimeter is an awesome instrument loads of features great resolution(59999 great accuracy(0.025 spectacular battery life(up to 800 hours and phenomenally rugged(3 m drop and IP67 image

Dave Jones has done a monumentally punishing torture test of this meter. Here he is tossing it out the window of a car driving at 88 km/hr and it still worked fine afterwards.

image

If you want check out just how spectacularly rugged this meter is see his torture test video here.

Maybe Keysight should make a cell phone this rugged - I know people who could use one.

 

This road test segment provides a peek inside. I have to admit I'm in no hurry to take my precious meter apart, but I wanted to include a section on what is inside to make the road test more complete, so I scrounged the internet for some images and will add my own description notes.

The meter is waterproof and all controls reflect this design objective, none the less, they all provide good tactile feedback with enough spacing to allow operation with gloves on. The hinged stand is part of the inner hard plastic case, so it will still stand up fine with the protective rubber shell removed.

image

Removing the 6 self-tapping case screws allows the back, which houses the batteries, to come off, revealing the back of the rotary switch and a couple of large high voltage, high current fuses.

image

In this close-up of the terminal area you can see the lengths they went to to protect against high voltage and current. The PCB has physical slots and metal shields to prevent arcing across the surface. There are perhaps 5 positive temperature coefficient (PTC) resistors (large green or black components in the input area) that will increase their resistance if they experience high current.

The white brick here looks like a nice 100nf Kemet Evox metallized polyester capacitor 630 V. The metal cover behind it shields the range-selection ceramic resistor network of temperature coefficient matched resistors. The spring connects to a battery terminal.image

image

Over at the right is the V-Sense circuit to detect high electric fields.

image

Zooming in - this inductor (L1) has been gooped up with RTV, probably to make it better able to survive high g shock loads. Inductors can be relatively large with lots of heavy iron and copper in them and they tend to break before most other types of component.

In this overview it looks like there are about 15 chips with more than 4 pins. A crystal is also visible.image

image

The 48 pin LQFP chip is a very capable Hycon HY3131 DMM analog front end.

image

This image shows the back of the front cover with the rotary selector in the middle. The silicone rubber keypad has 12 carbon-silicone contact pucks.

image

The top of the CCA does not have much circuitry but you can see more clearly how extensive the isolation cut-outs are, and you can see the hard gold contacts for the rotary switch. It looks like the keypad contacts use the same contact finish.

image

Just above the rotary contacts are a couple of gas discharge tubes (GDTs) to protect against high voltage. On some of the other images you can see there is actually a slot right under each tube to prevent arcing on the card.

image

With the LCD off you can see the rows of pads that connect to the LCD zebra connectors. The main CPU and display driver chip is a Renesas D78F0485 which is an 8 bit CPU with a 16 bit A/D converter. You may be able to deduce the clock rate from the crystal on the other side.

 

In summary, the teardown shows the meter is very well designed and very well built.

 

The next installment will cover some applications that are of interest to me.

 

Links to other installments of this road test:

unboxing

component and DC voltage measurements exploration

waveform measurements exploration

teardown research

applications exploration - component sorting

applications exploration - water level measurement

applications exploration - sensor datalogging

formal road test link

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Top Comments

  • mcb1
    mcb1 over 9 years ago +1
    If I recall one of the parts that came loose was the thru hole xtal which had been mounted as a SMD. Pity they didn't also add some goop as insurance. The other item was the ceramic resistor that slide…
  • mcb1
    mcb1 over 9 years ago in reply to Jan Cumps +1
    I don't think it is necessary to provide cures for extreme tests. I agree and it was impressive how much abuse it took. But the test where it was always dropped on the corner got me thinking if the 3m…
  • mcb1
    mcb1 over 9 years ago in reply to Jan Cumps

    I don't think it is necessary to provide cures for extreme tests.

    I agree and it was impressive how much abuse it took.

    But the test where it was always dropped on the corner got me thinking if the 3m test done that way, could it cause the same issue.

     

    The design does seem to have those two parts that are vunerable, and they have gooped up the inductor (presuambly because it did fail).

     

    Rest assurred I haven't included drop tests, as my luck would be that the surface wasn't flat and the LCD got cracked. image

    Mark

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  • Jan Cumps
    Jan Cumps over 9 years ago in reply to mcb1

    I don't think it is necessary to provide cures for extreme tests. It's okay if you meet the promised criteria.

    I did like that video though. Just for the plain fun of seeing something vandalised, but also a good learning point of what things are most prone to gravity challenges.

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  • Jan Cumps
    Jan Cumps over 9 years ago

    Edit: I had written this comment on shabaz page and it appears here. Odd. I did have both pages open at the same time though.

    The fastlog code is so clear and understandable  that it wouldn't be hard to write your own applications that could do whatever you want with that data.

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  • DAB
    DAB over 9 years ago

    Nice post Douglas.

     

    After seeing all of the abuse that Dave Jones gave the meter in Australia, your look inside shows why it was able to stand up to a lot of normal use events.

     

    DAB

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  • mcb1
    mcb1 over 9 years ago

    If I recall one of the parts that came loose was the thru hole xtal which had been mounted as a SMD.

    Pity they didn't also add some goop as insurance.

     

    The other item was the ceramic resistor that slide out the bottom of themetal housing.

     

    Granted these were extreme tests, but a relatively simple cure with little cost.

     

    Mark

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