I have a RC3563 and like it quite much.
The biggest issue with these 4-wire-meters is that they do not do a plausibility check of the 4W-connection. A keysight benchtop DMM displays no reading when one of the 4 wires is not connected, but the RC3563 often displays instable or inplausibly low or high values in that case. I don't want to complain due to the fact that you can get around 100 instruments of one type for the other, but it´s good to know that there is a cause for false readings.
Due to the same reason I build some pseudo-4W-test-leads where the L- and U-lines are both soldered to a short and sharp test needle. That way the contact resistance is of course not compensated, but for quick comparison of many parts it´s more reliable - and you can always fall back to the true 4W-leads if doubts arise.
Beside that it´s a really versatile tool. Not only for batteries but e.g. also for in-circuit test of capacitors or as a milliohm-meter for plugs or switches.
I decided to reply to this thread to keep it all in one spot - and to say thanks to Phil1977 for the idea!
I also have the RC3563, love it and it has a permanent spot on my bench. My kit came with battery holder, pogo pin-based probes and the Kelvin clamps. All good, but not ideal for small parts or small test points on a PCB (in some cases I use PCB traces as small value shunts - need to measure those to ensure the fab didn't screw my calculations
). I was getting by with the kit, always thinking that shorting the primary and sense lines ahead of the test point will introduce too much of an error and therefore would end up being wasted effort. But Phil1977's measurements made me try it.
First I dug out from the pile all possible options for the tips. And to my surprise, the cheapest tips (free essentially) that came with one of the cheap multimeters were the best. They are from the kit which comes with various 4mm thread screw-in attachments. One of the attachments were just the short 2mm tips with 4mm thread on the other end. Not even sure what was their use - screwing them into the female thread "receptacle" makes an oddly short "multimeter probe" and the included actual multimeter probes do have 4mm thread on one end, but permanently attached 2mm probes on the other end, so these little tips were not even the replacement tips... The beauty was that when measured by the RC3563 (with Kelvin clamps, ~10 mm apart on the same tip), each of these tips gave <0.5 mOhm. I had to wipe them well with 99% IPA to get that though.
Next, I looked around for what will be good to use as pen-style holders for these tips - and sure enough, Bic "Round Stick" pen (the worst writing instrument, but cannot be any cheaper
) were perfectly accommodating the 4mm thread side, not as a thread-in, but as a very snug press-fit. With the back of the tips properly wetted with solder - they were ready to go. I chose Red and Grey pens to make them look more like actual probes
.
It worked out very well, with round trip resistance as measured by the RC3563 being just over 2mOhm. Thanks to 4-wire setup - I used light two-core red+black wires, thin, flexible and yet giving great result in the end.
Of course I could not stop there - the odd GX16-4 connector comes as a pair, the plug (what I needed) and the receptacle (would be languishing in the odd parts bin forever). So my next move was to use the receptacle and make an adapter so that I can use the same newly created probes (and the RC3563 kit probes as well) with my bench multimeter, Siglent SDM3065X for 4-wire resistance measurements as well. So, with sacrifice of the 4 banana plugs and with upcycling of a couple of old PCBs cleaned of any parts - the adapter was created!
Have a look at the pictures. The adapter looks a bit "steam-punk" style, but I like to reuse the material that otherwise would be wasted, so let's call it "stylish looking"
. And measurement with SDM3065 shows 6.8mOhm round trip, not bad at all.
I hope this may inspire someone else to enhance their bench setup as well. Special thanks to Phil1977 as well as the community and the person who supports the RC3563 Wiki page!
All the best to everyone!
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