The CAT documents only say that meters must protect the user. They don't say that the meter has to survive.
OTOH a meter that survives seems more desirable to me.
History once again repeats. Again, the thread is not about meeting a safety standard. Of course it does keep coming up. The question I have for you is if you finally took the time to speak with someone who may actually have the background needed to answer this? Or it is just the same old posting your feelings about a papers I doubt you have ever seen let alone read? Welcome to the internet.
I think it may have been mentioned already, but perhaps you could ask Dave what he did with the U1282A he took down the canyon and if he would be willing to post you the board.
It would be nice to see the rotary selector test done with a fully operational meter to monitor it for any weird stuff during the cycle testing. With the types of testing I use these meters for I am probably more likely to wear out the selector switch well before being anywhere near a 5kV transient.
I asked him about it years ago as a parts meter to repair the prototype 121GW. No luck. Too bad really as it could have very well saved this meter from the recycle bins.
I've damaged a lot of meters that were not able to be salvaged. Most of the higher cost meters had enough protection that at least saved the parts that your not going to find at the local distributor. Even the UNI-T UT181A could be repaired. Keysight doesn't appear to attempt to protect these unique parts like many of their competitors.
For the life cycle test, the meters are unpowered, their batteries pulled. I collect data on the switch contact resistance and look at how the switch wears. It would be nice to be able to power it up after the face but it's certainly not a requirement.
Well that's disappointing. I was hoping it would do better than that.
I'm also very disappointed but not at all surprised by the outcome. It's an old design and I would assume the same group designed their entire DMM product line. When you copy paste, this is what you get. On the other hand, I am pleased that the testing is so reproducible.
One thing that (too late now...) would have been interesting to know is if it was damaged in that hit when the meter shut off, or if the final hit after it turned off is what did the actual damage. What I wonder is if the fact that the DMM chipset would have (likely) been turned off for that last hit, thus taking the range resistors out of circuit, did the meter get damaged worse that it would have if the chipset was still powered? Again it should have survived, but that last hit was (in my opinion) a little unfair due to the fact that no-one would be trying to measure with a meter when it is so obviously in a non-functional state with the display off.
I would imagine there are many people who feel several of the tests I conduct are a little unfair!! After a few years, I'm sure I've heard it all. I do wonder at times if making these results public has had any impact on the companies who develop these meters or the people who buy their products.
I am looking for what level the meters are damaged. Just that simple. Because the transient generator is semi-automatic, I will typically walk away from it. If you were to watch where I have damaged other meters, I suspect you will note several cases where the meters are subjected to the full 5 cycles no mater the outcome of each individual transient. I dare say that in some cases I will even go so far as to finish up the remaining transients for a given level. If it's damaged, its damaged. If I roast it to a crisp or pop a SOT23, what is recorded is still the same, the meter failed at level X.