Agilent U1232A teardown and repair

[jitter]

The last addition to my small collection of multimeters was an Agilent U1232A.
This one I got for free as it was "acting funny". The range switch would sometimes not select the correct range and it seemed to jump to a different setting instead. Strangely enough, the meter had passed calibration days before.

A sturdy little meter that looks simple at first, and it is: turn it on and measure. But then you want to disable that silly melody it plays by default every time you turn it on and discover the setup menu has more settings than you can shake a stick at. The manual needs 20 pages to explain it .

Useful extra: the white LED in the back, I've used this meter sometimes just as a flashlight.

Tearing it down reveals that quite some thought went into designing it. There are only a few screws in the whole unit, and yet the pcb sits rigidly in the casing.

[jitter]

More...

[jitter]

The repair.
Since the meter acted funny on the range switch, that's where I started looking. It turned out that the little pads on the pcb are spaced very closely together. Normally that's not a problem, but now the range switch had scored and pushed the pads out a little, and they could intermittently short circuit creating the strange reactions to the switch.
The problem was solved by making some cuts between the pads, you can see them in the photo.

Why the pads had been squashed out I'm not sure, but I did find that the range switch should clamp in the hole in the pcb, but one of the clamping tabs had broken off (also visible in the photos). I don't know if the person who was in there before me had caused that or it had left the factory that way. With that broken off clamp, maybe the pressure on the pads isn't even and some get scored and squashed. They weren't all as bad.

A cheap fix, hopefully a long lasting one.

[TheAmmoniacal]

In which dark alley do they hand out test gear that is acting funny?

[jitter]

A really really dark one: the company I work for... 

The tech before me had looked at it and had not discovered the fault. He just scrapped it (economically) and ordered a new one...

[retiredcaps]

The problem was solved by making some cuts between the pads, you can see them in the photo.

Thanks for sharing the repair tip on this meter.

[jitter]

The problem was solved by making some cuts between the pads, you can see them in the photo.

Thanks for sharing the repair tip on this meter.

You're welcome.
You will like this meter twice as much as the Voltcraft ME-32 as it has twice as many AAA batteries  .