Fluke Support

[rossmoffett]

My oldest brother is also in the electronics business, in maintenance of telecom systems.  He gave me his old Fluke 87-V for college a couple of years ago because it had some blemishes on the screen.  Someone had the nerve to weld with the meter nearby on the floor and it melted little pits all over it.  Still a perfectly functioning meter, I used it in all of my electronics classes.

The other day I was watching some of the Fluke reviews and it started bothering me, so I thought I'd try to remove the screen blemishes.  First I tried to polish it with a dremel metal polish wheel and some polishing compound, but it was way too abrasive and created worse problems.  Then I cleaned it carefully until the abrasive compound was gone, and found an instructional site only saying that I could torch it very briefly to remove blemishes.  That made it WAY worse.  So then I tried what I should have done all along, and I used very fine sandpaper.  It was working, but the blemishes were too deep at this point.  I gave up and started looking for replacement parts.  Turns out Fluke has replacements for pretty much everything except the electronics, and it only cost me $11 to replace the whole top cover!  This meter is 12 years old, and my brother had bought it used.  I thought about it, and I'll probably never buy a new meter again as long as I can find replacements.  I could save hundreds of dollars and still have it look and work like new, maybe requiring a calibration check!  That is the quality of Fluke meters and service.

[Simon]

any serious manufacturer should provide such support, these days so many sell stuf with a fail by date in mind and have a so called new product ready for you.

[rossmoffett]

Exactly!  But almost no one else does.  It pays to buy quality products.

[charliex]

Yep thats why I like fluke, they have a fixed price for repair and calibration certificate too, regardless of when you bought it, who bought it, what condition its in..

[rossmoffett]

Do you know what that fixed price might be, for, say, an 87-V?

I looked into that and the cal is to .05% accuracy!  The component drift is not bad, I imagine, and I expect I have +/- a few millivolt accuracy at least.  Still, I'm curious.

[charliex]

It was $150 if i recall, i inherited a very well used and busted up 88. broken case, internal case broken and broken lcd.