Bought 2 x cheapo Tenma LCR meters off Toploser recently. One of them working the other does not measure L/C as described.
These meters are exactly same as a UT603 shown in
this thread.
After opened and poked around the faulty one, couldn't find anything obviously wrong with it. The only difference is that it draws 20+mA in L or C modes whereas the working one only takes <10mA. The 6V regulated rail reads 5.8V, 200mV lower than the 6.0V in the working one.
I ended up wasting a lot of time measuring most of the components in circuit and compared that with the working unit - no difference. Swapping the 'daughter board' confirmed that the fault is on the 'motherboard'...
Well it's still a good deal for 1 working unit. I don't want to waste more time on the faulty one and I'm gonna bin it (well maybe 'shelf' it and re-purpose it for something else). However before I do so, I'd like to ask here to see if anyone knows that this is a common fault and maybe an easy fix.
(OT: If I want to buy an LCR meter I will definitely avoid these cheapo, doesn't do much, and give no confidence what-so-ever in the results you get from them. lowest range is 2mH, terrible for any uH inductor measurement.)
Attached is a schematic I found on a Chinese forum. The L/C section of the UT603/Teman 72-8155 is identical to this. Almost all of the components and their values are identical. (sorry for the picture quality, couldn't find any better ones)