Replacement fuses for multimeter test leads

John_Gray

Frozen_up_north wrote: »

I am a Fluke user...

At £165 from Amazon for the Fluke 115 multimeter, I'm guessing your company bought it for you!

Frozen_up_north

John_Gray wrote: »

At £165 from Amazon for the Fluke 115 multimeter, I'm guessing your company bought it for you!

It's a Fluke 177, bought for me, by me. No company involved, I'm retired.

With regard to the other comment by paddyrg suggesting a cheap meter supplied by Farnell should be safe, even an £80 RS own brand meter from RS Components has 20mm glass fuses factory fitted. Maplin sell those meters favoured by Fluke for blowing up reliably, so reputable suppliers don't necessarily sell safe multimeters.

I'll stick with an industry standard meter by Fluke, it's not about saving money, it's about safety.

John_Gray

Any multimetering I do usually is at a maximum of 12 V DC, so buying a Fluke would be overkill (if you'll pardon the inappropriate expression!).

I can use one of those neon screwdrivers to check for the presence of a 220 V line.

Heedtheadvice

Derrick,
Go with fuse one.

Safety note. Car batteries can produce very high currents!

Given you wish to use with a car battery, should there be a fault in your meter or you inadvertantly select current measurement and connect across the battery, a massive current could flow that could be dangerous. A fuse will give protection and the quick/fast ceramic blowing variety is best.

Do note in the spec the 800mV voltage drop across the fuse, probably only when drawing the rated half amp current . That should not affect significantly any voltage indication when using the multimeter to directly do a measurement as it will not draw any significant current. In other circumstances (if you were to use the leads to make connections to other equipment, for example) that might not be the case. Just be aware!

forgotmyname

Fuse No1 ONLY.

Why not not just replace the leads with better ones?

derrick

derrick wrote: »

I bought the leads separately from the meter and did not know they came with fuses, I got them for the crocodile clips functionality as holding probes sometimes needs a third hand.

So 500mA is equivalent of 0.5A ? Meaning the one I linked to is 10 times the rating?.

derrick wrote: »

These leads will only be used for car, (12v DC), and DC batteries, when I want/need to use the crocodile clips, so if I managed to purchase non fused crocodile leads it would be no different than putting to high a fuse rating in these leads, but I am aware that the leads may not be for current levels as outlined in post #2.

So with the above in mind would I be OK with one of the following?

One

Two

Three.

forgotmyname wrote: »

Fuse No1 ONLY.

Why not not just replace the leads with better ones?

I have other leads including the ones that came with the meter, see quotes above.


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