Hello everybody, I am more of a reader and watcher, than a poster, I have posted a few times in the last few years, mainly just browse all the posts.
So.. I have a few cheap multimeters, and I have been wanting a good quality, Fluke, or something along those lines, for who knows how long, I have been saving up for probably a year, no joke. So about 6 months ago my neighbor from a few houses down was selling a fluke 87 III, and I was very intrested, the payment that he wanted was to Mow, edge, weed-eat his front and back yard one a week, for 4 months, a total of like 16 some crazy times! AND I could not have the meter until i was finished, which was very sad, but even so i worked my butt off for the last 4 months doing my best, and on Monday I Finally finished, and got the meter,
I rushed home to start playing with it of course, and a few things seemed off-
Screen randomly restarting when i go into the 4 1/2 digit mode, beeper not always working, very dim backlight, etc-
but the main problem and question i have is about the fuses, so both of the fuses were shorted, I took them out went to every store that my older sister would take me to looking for matching fuses, After failing at every store I ended up buying a 20A fast blow ceramic fuse, and a 5 Amp equivalent, which were the closest two i could find to fit, now i know that they are way wrong for saftey etc, I just wanted to try and make a measurment,
so upon testing with them, WOW, the current readings were way, like 60mA off the pretty close matched value from all my other DMMs which all measured around the same, on all different values,
So, my first question is, would the maybe resistance of these very wrong fuses be the possible cause? Now i am to young to have a debit card, and ive begged everyone I know to let me order the fuses from the internet but everyone says no unfortunatly, so Ive come to accept the fact that it will be years before i get proper fuses, so i am guessing im just out of luck with using the meter for current readings on my new Fluke meter
![Sad :(](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/sad.gif)
could anyone tell me the resistance readings of the proper fuses so i can compare?
if i got a close enough match do you think i might be able to use it?
sorry for this long post, but ive been looking for hours now today for solutions and i am getting a headache, I am pretty torn up inside about it so I wanted to tell someone and maybe get a little help, it might seem like a small deal being just a few fuses but it was a lot of hard work and years of only dreaming to come to this, thank you very much to anyone who can assist, and have a great day!