Managed to blow the big fuse in my 83V. I'm not very familiar with cartridge type fuses. Is this something I should buy from Fluke or is there a good interchange?
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Fluke/803293?qs=aZCcseWLxnv0rmDDerivdw%3D%3D&mgh=1
Since I'll probably do something thick in in the not too distant future I wouldn't mind finding a dozen at a better price...
Fluke itself just resells the fuses they buy from Bussmann. But honestly, the price via fluke is often the lowest!
There are three manufacturers of fully compliant multimeter fuses for the Fluke 80 series (and many other industrial meters, like my Keysight) that I’m aware of (for the 11A and 440mA, respectively):
Bussmann DMM-B-11A and DMM-44/100-R
Littelfuse FLU011 and FLU.44
SIBA 5019906.11 and 5021006.0,44
I would not hesitate to use any of those. There may be others that make them, but I haven’t come across any others, even after looking extensively. (I work at a vocational training center, and of course beginner apprentices burn out the 440mA fuses far more often that we’d like, so cheaper alternatives would be nice, but have proven elusive.)
Note that the 440mA fuse is 35mm long, while the 11A is 38mm long. The longer one is a common fuse size, the shorter one is much, much rarer, and is used here to prevent insertion of a different fuse type. There are lots of cheaper 38mm fuses in 400mA and 500mA, but they will not fit. (SIBA makes 440mA DMM fuses in both 35 and 38mm long, so be sure to use the part number above to ensure you get the 35mm one!)
Multimeter fuses are designed to interrupt huge fault currents without exploding, but also to blow extra fast. (Faster than standard “fast blow” fuses.) So don’t attempt to replace them with cheaper fuses. What you can do safely when working on non-mains circuits, however, is to use another, smaller-value fuse in series (in your test leads) to blow first For example, if you know your circuit isn’t supposed to draw more than 5 amps, you could use a cheap 5A fuse, so that if 10A of current pass, it’ll blow but the expensive DMM fuse won’t. But don’t expect, for example, a “fast” 10A glass fuse to reliably protect the 11A DMM fuse, since a fault current could blow the 11A fuse first, since it’s faster.