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Old 01-04-2004, 10:52 AM
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tangent tangent is offline
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Quote:
the hardest thing is knowing what to get
I know you want to match some resistors, so consider getting something that can grab a resistor by its lead and hold it securely. Not all grabbing type probes will do this well, due to their design. If you don't do it this way, you have to hold two probes and a resistor in two hands, and keep it all steady while you read the value off the meter. It's not the most difficult thing, but it is less than desirable; you end up bending the resistor leads while you hold it securely against the probes this way, as well. With good grabbers, the resistor leads stay straight and you only have to hold the probes.

You'll also want a grabbing probe with a bigger jaw than will work for resistor matching. Use this for clamping one probe to ground while you poke with a standard probe elsewhere, for instance.

The flexible grabbers can sometimes be helpful, for holding a probe to a hard-to-get-to test pin. This one is definitely not a high priority item, though.

While you're shopping for probes, get some DMM fuses. Nothing worse than blowing the ammeter side's fuse through a slip of the probe to a high-current section of the circuit, and then having to wait a week for a replacement fuse to arrive. You won't find 'em in the fuse section of Home Depot.

Quote:
I downloaded the Pomona catalog last night
You'd be better off starting with the catalog of one of the distributors and picking parts that way. I don't know that any of the distributors carry the entire Pomona line. It's possible of course, I just mean that I would choose the distributor first, simply because I'd probably want to order something else at the same time.

Quote:
why are Kelvin clips so darn expensive?
A) Low sales volume

B) They're only used with high-dollar equipment. The manufacturers figure you can afford it if you can buy such a high-end instrument that it can use Kelvin probes, and you should only use high-quality probes with high-end instruments anyway.
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