12V battery ready 18.14?

Not a great advice, but an easily acceptable one. People don't want to hear that a multimeter costs more than $30,so you tell them what they want to hear. I bought my used Fluke 87 for about $130, if memory serves. Have not looked back. I'm an electronics and software engineer and I've dealt with enough industrial electrical measurements to know that doubting your measuring tool is a big waste of time. And in industry time =money. That's why you will not see cheap tools in a professional environment. I'm sure that meter I bought has paid for itself many times over by now. I simply never ever have to doubt what I see on its display. That's worth $130, I think.

 

That might be normal.

 

Those values are good for new units.

... and your car's 12V is supposed to be significantly higher than 12.0V.

 

but what if it's really 12.6? could my meter be off more than that?

 

I guess my 87 is 28 or 29 years old now ... I remember I bought it just before the 1990 redefinition of the volt, and Fluke asked if I wanted to send it back in for recalibration, which I didn't bother to do, since the difference between the old and new definitions is further to the right of the decimal point than you expect an 87 to measure anyway. I'm sure it's off by more than that now, having never been sent for recalibration in all this time, but it still gives me reasonable numbers that agree with other things when I check.

Somewhere recently I found the calibration instructions for it online and downloaded them, in case I ever need to get that fussy. Of course it requires a known-calibrated reference to work from, but there's a university here, so I could probably find one if I asked the right people.

Around ten years ago the display started getting wonky, some segments being dim or not showing up, etc. I had to peel it away from the circuit board and swab the contacts with some alcohol and press it back down. All better. So, there's a thing an 87 might need every 20 years or so.

-Chap

 

Maybe that could make the case for having an analog meter, at least on the side. Yeah I know, it's akin to a slide rule, but seems to me they're simpler, no fussy electronics. Battery isn't even required, except for resistance measurements.

In a way they're easier to read. Sort of analogous to a turntable vs a cd player.

 

YES.
Beyond likely; a sure thing.
But before throwing it away, be sure it isn't set for AC voltage.

 

more like a tape deck.

 

On the other hand, they're vulnerable to the thousand natural shocks that delicate movements are heir to. A Fluke you can toss around a bit.

And a couple minutes to swab with alcohol every twenty years doesn't seem like a huge inconvenience—as long as I've still got what it takes to wield a Q tip ten years from now when it needs it again....

-Chap

 

We used digital in the factory for almost everything. But sometimes it would give a bogus reading when checking a solenoid coil to see if it had failed. That's where the Simpson 260 came in so handy.

 

Interesting:

Simpson 260: Meters | eBay

 

New batteries generally read over rated voltage, depends on how long they’ve been on the shelf.

 

He worries about EVERYTHING.
Yes, the numbers he mentioned are perfectly normal.......and actually indicate that his meter is working fine.

 

Do you mean the OP's numbers? Something seems amiss with his readings; for me a brand new AA battery will measure maybe 1.65 volt:

 

AA sized nimh and nicd will measure around 1.3v when fully charge.

 

Do you remember what sort of bogus reading? Could it just have been faster at catching the inductive spike when the solenoid circuit opened, and the Simpson just kind of averaged it out?

I had kind of a similar experience when building the first version of my trunk aux-power thingy. I put the Fluke on its fastest peak-catching setting, because I wanted to know how big the spike was when switching the relay off, so I could be sure to use a transistor that could handle it. Turned out to hit a good −50 volts when directly switching off the +12 volt relay. That was too much for any of the transistors in the junk drawer, so I made point of buying one with an 80 V breakdown rating. (Then when the whole thing was built, the transistor ended up turning it off a little more softly than the snap switch I'd been testing with, and the spike in real life never went below −5 volts, and I could have used the stuff from the drawer after all. Ah well.)

-Chap

 

See how much time is being wasted? All because of an untrustworthy meter. This is why Fluke and other industrial strength meters were invented and they cost what they cost because making a good tool aint cheap. As they say, good tools aren't cheap and cheap tools aren't good.

Just get a good meter if you plan on making electrical measurements. You wouldn't use a tape measure that was unreliable, would you? Fluke is one of the best on the planet, there is no reason to even discuss it. An older Fluke will still work well and will not set you back so much. New Fluke has been bought out and reportedly is going downhill, BTW, which is very sad news.

 

NO, sorry. I meant Bisco.

 

this worries me.

 

Time was money, so if we had a malfunctioning solenoid, we just replaced it. Then, once the machine was running, we'd take the old one back to the shop and check to see if the coil was open. With the digital meter, we sometimes got a false open reading. I really don't know why since, if it applies continuous voltage in resistance mode, it should settle down just like the analog meter. No one in the shop ever figured out why. We just lived with it.