Thanks for clarification, on photo it looks to be down on board, at the level of that screw head, touching it...
Even if it was flat on the PCB touching for the entire surface it wouldn't make a difference, the creepage distance is the same length along the PCB anyway.
That's debatable, if you look, at half of resistor creepage distance there is ground underneath the resistor. So looking at that, that is definitely half of what is resistor rated for...
No, it doesn't work like that. There is still creepage from the high voltage end to that ground plane along the PCB surface and then it has to get through the solder mask. Adding the resistor on top makes absolutely no difference to the length of that creepage path. So it makes absolutely no difference if that resistor is vertical or flat touching the PCB. I think I'll have to do a specific video on this.
You are absolutely correct. It is my English that fails me. Thank you for correcting me. I went and took a look at verbiage..
Creepage distance is surface path distance (which in this case would be PCB and component surface), and as you say correctly, it would be the same.
I wanted to say clearance distance (distance of over the air discharge path), that is distance between (in this case) two pins of that resistor in divider, and pcb nets with exposed metal connected to it .
Problems are not that simple, when creepage and clearance start to combine (for instance if there is surface contamination or condensation).. In which case over that case you get a voltage gradient over high impedance path.. If I remember correctly, for 8kV overvoltage class min. distance is 8mm. When this SIP divider is mounted vertically, it is clear what is what and how you measure clearance distance . When mounted like this over PCB traces and ground plane, it's not so obvious. But I'm sure that people that designed this meter know all this and took it into account. It's just unusual to see.
Another problem I encountered in practice was that with any component that is close to PCB (so pretty much any component ), condensation will tend to go under component, between PCB and component.
Especially if board is very clean, and if there is no surface wetting, condensation will tend to form into droplets, and by capillary action get sucked into tight spaces between board and component.
We used conformal coating and/or TH construction with DIP cases and passives distanced off the board to promote drying. Nowadays, you just go smd, good conformal and you're golden.
But, I doubt anything like that will be a problem with multimeter in normal use.
Regards,