that ain't right for canada especially this early in the year
time to go hide in the basement and grab a beer
to go along with tonight's tinkering i am enjoying a pint of uh half pint brewings stir stick stout
i've had this one before it's uh it's pretty nice uh it's got notes of dark roast coffee semi-sweet
chocolate uh some goldings hops and just a really nice malty flavor so tonight i am just
going to be looking at a couple of old analog multimeters that i've acquired over the years
this little uh hioki clamp on meter is one that my sister-in-law picked up at an antiques auction it
was in a lot of other stuff that she was picking up and she figured hey i know who can uh enjoy
this thing so here it is and this one is an old analog multimeter that my dad had in his garage
he doesn't even remember when he got it except that when he did buy it he made a note on the
back as he tended to do so he picked this thing up at the local hardware store in october of 1995
and as you can see it's barely been used if at all so um i figured it might be interesting just to uh
take a look at these two old guys um of course everybody these days uses digital multimeters and
there's hundreds of them available for your enjoyment but um where there's that one too
and there's that one but there are things that you can do with an analog meter that is actually
harder to do on a digital meter and the the main thing is that
oh well let me start a manual the main thing that you can do with an analog meter so much
easier than a digital meter is to track a slowly changing voltage when you're tuning something or
adjusting something and looking for a peak or a dip in voltage that's where an analog meter
gives you a really good idea of what's going on so let's take a peek at this one first
oh he never peeled it no it's my dad's meter i'm not going to do the music um this is
just a no-name brand hung chang hm102 if you care to do some googling but you probably won't
find anything imported for home hardware stores from made in korea hmm i stand corrected it's
not chinese anyway the specs on it dc voltage up to a thousand volts across five different ranges
ac voltage again zero to thousand volts across five different ranges decibels oh it's just
got a decibel scale so you can uh okay uh it is uh zero to ten meg ohms across three different
scales by the looks of it uh dc current up to 500 milliamps or 10 amps on a separate jack
and then the same thing again in french because it's a good canadian package so like
all analog meters it shows multiple scales across it here about most in most analog meters anyway um
and you just pick the one that is relevant to whatever range you're in if you're in a thousand
volts dc you pick the 0 to 10 and multiply as appropriate if you're in 250 volts dc you pick
the the zero 250 and on and on if you're in a 10 volt scale use that same scale down there
uh ac and dc voltage are down here resistance is across the top
uh battery test down there oh that's nice battery test mode why do you need a separate battery test
mode if you've got a voltage meter because the battery test mode puts a bit of a load on the
battery so the floating voltage of a battery is going to be much different well somewhat different
unloaded than it would be if it was loaded so let's just try this with a battery
so that shows up in about the 60 to 70 percent range
same with this one but if we measure it on dc volts in the 10 volt range
it's showing up at about what 7.2 or thereabouts
but same there let's see how it does in dc voltage mode 7.94 volts
and that is just a hair under 8 volts oh yeah one feature that i didn't point out that you'll find
commonly on analog meters see this little band up here this reflective band that is a little
mirror that helps you deal with parallax error if you're looking at the me the needle from an angle
then you notice that what you're seeing down here differs but if you're looking at it hang on i'll
just get this reflection here so that the needle and its reflection in the mirror lines up exactly
then you know you're straight above it and in this case we're showing pretty much eight volts
so that's that's useful to know if you're looking at it from a wonky angle you can be like half a
volt off which may not be important but it might depending on your application now then this guy's
not going to be able to measure resistance without a battery in it because of course
to measure resistance you have to put a small current through whatever it is you're measuring
so let's pop it open and see what's inside it has batteries in it wonder if they're any good
oh yeah let's pop those batteries out we should still be able to use the battery test mode right
that shows up as a solid question mark so seventy percent it's probably good enough this one however
is toast okay that's that over there let's see what i got in my stash here that'll do so i'll
put those two batteries back in but let's see what else we have inside of this meter we have a fuse
and there's a spare one in the package that looks like a buzzer there is the meter movement itself
other than that just an assortment of resistors there is the current shunt labeled rs
other than that it's all just passive components depending on the other side of the board there is
nothing on that side of the board except for this pot there is the wipers on the dial that selects
the different modes from this little wafer switch back here or by printing the circuit board switch
really simple and straightforward not a lot to go wrong i note on the manual
that he has the measurements of the fuse that came out of it originally
so i'm guessing that he probably replaced the fuse at some point in time which means
he probably blew the fuse that fuse will be on the current uh sensing probably okay i've got my
little calibrated reference here i'm not going to be able to test the inductance or capacitance but
i can definitely test the resistance so again that's 180 k minus uh you know point whatever
and this thing is showing up pretty much 200 so and ballpark close enough
this isn't the precision device of course but it'll it'll do the job for the kind of stuff that
this meter is designed for for automotive work or something like that just for casual homeowner use
i think that's just fine and then there's this guy the heoke ct 100 clamp tester this is more
of like an appliance repair guys uh meter or an electrician well maybe not an electrician but
probably more for an appliance repair guy although current range up to 100 amps ac
i'm not sure where you'd be using that because i don't think you could get a cable capable of
that through that little opening there anyway this um is a bit of an oddity uh note the
jacks for plugging in an external set of leads those are not standard bananas
they are the same gauge as a probe tip
now i remember seeing those kind of uh jacks decades ago but i don't know i'm gonna have to go
digging around on ebay and see if i can find some that's going to make it a little
bit more challenging to test uh but we'll have to play with that first i think i will
do the current though so for a test load maybe we'll start off with this uh 70 watt
hot glue gun i don't know if i'm gonna be able to see that or not
so half an amp there
no i don't see any movement on this at all when i plug that in
hmm actually before i get carried away here
notice that that needle is sitting below zero so that's not going to be especially calibrated
fortunately there is this little zeroing thing screw here that just adjusts the
mechanism of the meter there we go let's try this again yeah negligible i don't think that's
enough of a load so let's try this electric space heater see what happens when i turn it on high
okay there we got a bit of a meter deflection on the 50 amp scale 10 5 4 amps it's showing
maybe five as it slowly warms up according to the kilowatt it's actually seven amps and actually
this is climbed up a little bit too as it warmed up interestingly this heater is a resistive load
so we got a perfect 1.0 power factor okay 8.5 8.7 so it it does the job within reason it it
gets you within the ballpark that's nice now then since i didn't have a set of leads for this thing
i had to do something really janky don't try this at home kids so put that into 300 volt
range plug those guys into there and our current voltage is 121.6 according to that
plug that in oh hey 120 102 ticks yeah okay that works for what it is that's a perfectly reasonable
little meter if i could find some proper leads for it let's see what's inside this little guy
on the back here it looks like this was originally bought from duncan instruments in western ontario
i wonder if they're even still there serial number maybe five zero eight three
and again nothing too fancy in here just a handful of uh of components these will
be precision resistors there's uh four diodes there probably set up in the bridge
there is the measuring coil coming off here great scott actually did a video
quite recently looking into a current clamp meters basically this is essentially a transformer
this is the iron core of it this the primary is the wire that you're measuring and the secondary
is this coil here and then that's just measured by the meter down here rectified of course
these will be fairly precision resistors um what is this capacitor doing i'm not sure
oh oh this capacitor is not doing anything okay we have a repair to make
there's a bit of blue loctite on this one so it made it a little bit of a challenge to get off i
had to lean into it a bit but i think there we go so let's see what's underneath there
without breaking anything else okay so it looks like that capacitor lead
used to be on that track right there so i can re-solder that on there and restore it uh that
should be easy enough except for all these damn wires in the way trying to get them kind of uh oh
i have to go back in the video and see where the other side of that capacitor was now
damn it looks like it came out of that cold solder joint right there
which is the first hole behind that little calibration potentiometer
okay oh oh uh yeah that should be easy enough i guess straighten that lead out a little bit
poke it down so it's all there i can feel it
now then to get this guy down underneath these other wires here without setting
fire to them i think before i get that in there i'll just tin that lead a little bit and then
bring it in there and tack it on kind of wish that hit a hole to go through
now then i'm not entirely certain what that capacitor is doing
uh one side of it is to the same place as one side the winding off this uh
current transformer over here actually when i look at it it's in parallel with the transformer here
so that is going to be a low voltage on that so that's probably just knocking spikes and
crap off i'm guessing because there is one wire from the transformer and there's the other wire
okay and now it's just a matter of putting this all back down folding it all the wires down
neatly so nothing gets pulled and tugged because it's all pretty tight in here so put this guy back
together and see if it still works i don't see any reason for it not to somebody's going to ask
there was a set of precision screwdrivers that i got decades and decades ago
at princess auto that came with a few little wrenches and some hex drivers and things like
that i don't use them very often but they do come in handy on some small stuff once in a while
this is probably the first time we use this one in over a year
so that shows 120 volts exactly
plug this guy in and yeah i'd call that 120 volts as well looks like it to me
but that capacitor that we replaced or reinstalled was in the current clamp so
let me reset up my current clamp uh rig here okay there's the heater back in turn it on low
just barrier registers turn it on high
four five six amps and we're reading on the lower amp scale that's showing your vote six right now
keeping up seven yeah okay so that was kind of fun playing with these uh two
old meters um this one i said it's nothing special at least it wouldn't be if it wasn't to
come out of my dad's garage he was oh he's retired now he's uh moved into a
senior's apartment so he doesn't need his garage and his tools anymore but
he was at one point uh well for decades a farmer and before that uh he worked at the local garage
doing basic mechanics stuff so it's kind of nice to have some of his tools this one was something
he bought after he'd retired but it's still kind of nice having some of his tools and this one
it just came from a random auction but it's a cool little thing to have too
i'm happy that i have them i'm happy that they work i may actually use them occasionally
well thanks for uh thanks for stopping by thanks for watching i appreciate that uh
i know this wasn't much of a video today but i was having fun so
there it is um questions or comments down below if you care too talk to you later