5ky's meters are on there way and should arrive this week.
I'm liking the damage I see. Lets hope for more kaboom
My wife saw it run for the first time tonight on that cheap Harbor Freight meter. Gave it a 5 nice 700V hits. It's very quite except for the beep at the end of the test. She was not impressed but thought the case looked nice. Then I turned it up to kill all meters mode........... CRACK!!!! She jumped. I jumped. I think we have the kaboom thing down.
After killing the HF meter (which was not my intent) I removed the protection I had added to the UNI-T UT90. This meter made it into the final 4 before the first failure with it. It's basically stock now except my wire trace repair may hold up a little longer. Because the waveform is different with the new generator, this should give us some idea how the new meters compare with the old.
Rather than using the clamp to hold the meters, I bent up a holder which is then grounded to the generator. I did this to see if any of the cases would arc through. Doubtful.
My plan is to do a quick functional check of the meters and replace any of the blown fuses.
Static test them all with the grill starter
Run them at their rated DC input voltage.
Run them off the rectified AC signal (that killed the HF meter) in all of the modes.
The Brymen BM869s will be put through these same tests along with them. The UNI-T UT90 and Fluke 101 already have survived these tests and will not be retested.
The meters that make it through this basic testing with no damage (other than blown fuses) will get ran with the new generator. The Fluke 101, UNI-T and the Brymen will be tested with them as well.
When I tested the first meters, I used a source of 50, 14 a 2 ohms. This time, I plan to keep the source at 2 ohms throughout the entire test.