How to use a Digital Multimeter

welcome back to this lesson this lesson is on multimeter and today I'm whatever or this lesson we're gonna talk a little bit about the multimeter and some of the features on multimeter and some of the things that you guys may want to look out for when you guys buy one or maybe just to get a little bit understanding on how to use it and then I'll show you guys kind of how I use it and basically the ones that I use but I sent out a survey maybe two months ago trying to get some feedback on on the people that was on my list on basically what they would like to be included in in the training program and I was really shocked when the number one thing was multimeter I'm the amount of people that wanted to learn about multimeter to me right is one of those things where I know it and I'm thing like this is so easy why are you requesting to learn about multimeter I mean it's it's pretty easy stuff pretty much self-explanatory and I didn't understand that but I try to take myself out of my own shoes and and look through the different lenses of other people's eyes and try to understand where they come from so if I look back in the days when I first started I wouldn't really know how to use a multimeter either either so today we're gonna talk about that and I'm gonna show you guys some of the features my preference has always been fluke I've used other meters before and I've just never really liked it and flute has always been good to me so my whole shop is basically full of fluke meters and basically anything has really relate to fluke so basically what I want to talk about is fluke why I need you guys to understand as far as multimeter goes is that even though there's some very cheap ones there is some expensive one get yourself a decent one I've heard other people say like about motorcycle because I used to have a motorcycle and they they would say however how how much however much you think your head is Worf that's how much you'll pay for your helmet and if you think your head is worth $10 then go buy a $10 helmet but if if you think your head is worth a thousand then go buy a $1,000 motorcycle helmet and that's kind of how I look at fluke and if you buy the real cheap one they won't give you accurate readings and they won't fit into certain categories depending on what you guys are working on like for example there's like different categories and these categories would be rated for different voltages and but it's really ideal for certain environment and I'll go over that in a bit but if you want to go cheap then don't expect good results but if you want good results and you won't give protection then go with a more expensive multimeter there are so many out there as far as like different models is basically what you do and then what kind of meter would meet that need so if you if you're only doing like a a or a computer repair and you're working with like low voltage like 110 single-phase then buy cheap one those are normally rayon category three or two I think yeah category two where a single-phase 110 and low voltage DC from like five to 12 and 24 volts DC and that would be the type that you would go for but if you work in a industrial place where you have three-phase coming in and maybe even like high voltage I mean not high voltage but higher voltage the three-phase out to like 580 and then I only like category four or three right six hundred to a thousand votes and so just what I'm trying to say is that identify what would work best for you don't just go out there and spend a lot of money just to have a real nice meter and you never use all the features but don't go really cheap to where you're gonna end up hurting yourself and blowing up the meter and so so don't go cheap but make sure that you you pick one that's a little bit over what you're doing so that you have that protection there and that one will perform well for whatever you're in because I don't know what industries you guys are in I know somewhere in the medical some are in industrial some or a computer so it really is you guys Galu to determine that and you go to to like the manufacturers website and look up at there are different bottles and figure out which one works best for you yes so with that being said let's move on to look at some of these fluke meters and I'll show you guys how they work and how we use it so let me flip this around alright these are the three fluke that we mainly use in here this is a a fluke seventy seven and then here's a fluke 117 newer motto and this is the newest model not the newest but I've had it for about two years now but this is a fluke 280 and I way more expensive I think this one if I remember correctly is about 200 bucks so I think we're on 170 this one I bought this one it was like right at around thousand and I don't remember how much this one is I use this one the most this is what I keep on my workbench and then these right here my Tech's use these so don't want to get too much into these they all have different features there are suited for certain things but they also do a lot of the same things also and like I said all these are used here in the field on me on the workbench I use this one on in the field a lot this is where I go and take it out on the field there's a lot of things you could do with this but we'll just mainly focus on the main features because there's a lot of you guys out there that would use different type of of meters not necessarily fluke there's so many other brands out there from well-known brands to really cheap brands and so they all have basically the same features just maybe a little bit different on how you use it because like some of these like for example these settings here right they are automatic so they automatically go and you can see I use it so much that batteries out but they they are automatic and there's some that you have to adjust up to like certain voltage you have to increase it by a certain of increment but these are all just the same they automatically adjust so like I said I really love fluke and they they have their own different purposes but we're gonna focus I'm gonna go through and we're gonna talk about all the features on here and then I'll really focus on the ones that that really is important as far as being a tech okay so if if we look at this one over here all right I'm gonna turn it into here if you guys can see you guys can see let me scoot this out just a little bit if you guys can see this Auto V the Auto V stands for Auto voltage right obviously the V is the voltage and what it does is even if it's on AC or DC without having to change it to two AC or two DC when you when you leave it on this mode right here it automatically knows and it'll give you the reading so let me let me prove that all right I'm gonna put I'm gonna put AC on there and then you see is 41 votes right and as you guys can see right here it says AC C and a I'm gonna switch over to DC and you can see it's twelve point three votes what DC so that's it that's the cool thing about this this feature on on this model here and this one of course has it to or the I mean this one will have it it does have the low impedance but yeah yeah it does sorry I don't really use that much but that's the cool thing about this one is the Auto V it automatically adjust and it could tell you if it's AC or DC and it automatically throws it out and gives it to you another cool thing about this is the low Z right Z is impedance impedance mainly is for AC voltage and this one right here with the low low impedance it gives you a very accurate reading and they call that they call voltage that is is like maybe like your wires or something that is creating a charge which is gonna give you some voltage reading it's gonna what is what this does is it's gonna eliminate any kind of ghost reading so it's gonna give you like a very accurate reading so I don't know if I could produce it here but normally it you put it in through your outlet you could read it so for example I'm gonna put it said to that I'm gonna try see if it works because I haven't tried it yeah forty five point five and forty five so it my power supply is is all working like it should so I'm not gonna read that but that's basically what is for so it's is to read to eliminate any kind of ghost reading any kind of voltage that's present there with a charge that's not supposed to be there and it just gives you a good reading obviously the off and in this right here your sine wave you see something is is for your voltage or meter all meters have that and like I said these were automatically adjust to whatever voltage is reading and it will display that as you guys saw on top is your duty cycle so if you if you not duty cycle or frequency if you guys wanna read some kind of frequency then you guys could put it on there and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna set this up and I'm gonna put a frequency ringing for you guys to kind of test it okay got my I got my signal generator ready and I'm gonna put a what I did was I left it on here right in order for me to get the the Hertz I have to press this button which I did ready but if I press that button is let me know that it's gonna be reading frequency so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put my plip on here that's coming from my frequency generator or signal generator and then we'll put it here as you can see I'm right at 10 K hers and I'm gonna adjust my frequency you can see it go down so I'm gonna add an increment of a thousand and if I'm gonna go by an increment of of one let's see how accurate it is so so this thing is pretty accurate my frequency or signal generator is is right at the six point zero five Hertz so okay Hertz I mean trying to look at it differently but you can see that's what your frequency is for I don't really recommend measuring this way I found that it's not 100% accurate so it's a feature there I may be wrong in it but I don't really use it because I have other equipments in here that would measure frequency whole lot better and then that meter but whenever I'm out in the field then I would definitely use it or if I don't have my oscilloscope then I would definitely use it all right so let's move on to the next feature DC voltage basically it is that's what it means just DC voltage this is millivolt if you if you want to read low voltage in the millivolts then you would switch it to that I don't know why it's kind of jumpy here maybe it's picking up some noise from somewhere because it's such a low voltage that is popping up other things so here is the ohms measuring resistance or any kind of resistor just we use that quite often and this is the one that we use quite often to when we're tracing things on a circuit board it's basically a continuity test so if I touch here with zero homes it's gonna beep as you can see for that signal here is giving a sound and then you just you can see over here the resistance which is zero homes I think it goes up to like maybe 50 ohms before they quit beating or something somewhere around there but this is what we use it for and in here is is your diode reading right so we'll get more into the diode I'll show you guys in a bit but you set that to the diode and then you're on your way into testing dials a lot of people use it just to see if there's any short and they will use that too so if I if there's a dead short it'll be too and basically what what is done is it has like a my volt battery in the back here like if I do this and all this thing's missing it seems miss you know this thing's missing a screw so I guess what I'm I take lost it but you have a knife volt battery in here and basically just going in here and then you were just screwing in I might have to find out why why they're not taking care of my equipments so basically it's given I is giving out some kind of voltage right and it's gonna put it across the diode and it's gonna come back and give you a reading on the voltage drop on the diode so if I set this on votes and if I put my red here and my black here my comment you see is giving out two point four eighty six votes so that's when you put it on a dial setting so that's kind of how you test the dial so just remember that you're putting a voltage down again the next one is your capacitor again you have that you you have that option but I don't really use it because we have other meters in here or other testing equipment in here that does it better but if you guys don't it's also a good tool so here's a here's a capacitor and if you guys look at it is 1035 so if I want to test that I'll just go back and press this button forgot to mention this too this is just basically to turn all the display light like that all right so so this thing automatically since this since the range so you see here is the there there's a negative and then so if the negatives gonna go there I'm going to touch it there do like that bear with me here and then I'm gonna touch it here and we get any 992 978 and as you guys see here's 1,000 it just checks for your microfarad this thing doesn't check for any leakage or anything on the caps so that's that and this right here is your amperage so if I want to test my my amperage or my amps then I would have to take this out as you can see this is only for your capacitors your diode your continuity your resistance and your voltage and this over here is your your amps so I this is ready at a 10 amp there's a 10 amp fuse in there so don't go over 10 amps if I put it in here then I'm ready to test my circuit or test my how much amps is being pulled from my circuit here you could test the frequency to on your on your your circuit so love your feature and then this is more for AC and this is for AC and this vote alert basically unless you know if there's any voltage by then you know right so if there's like a voltage it will let you know so it is good to so right here I'm putting it close to my power supply and let me know there's voltage around I want to take it away alright so I took it away and now is is no longer beeping one thing I want to mention too is it's very important that you guys get the one that says on true RMS basically this true RMS is to give what RMS stands for is root mean square is there's just a calculation to give you the most accurate reading for any of your like like sine waves AC voltage duty cycles square wave it's gonna give you the average so this is really gonna be accurate on that part of it so if you guys don't remember anything else just remember that if you want to get one with the true RMS meter so the this is it for this meter and this meter for a typical electronic tech this meter would do one other thing you guys want to do to is you guys want to make sure that you guys have the right like like probes okay so see these right here these are array for 10 amps if you guys could see it see I was ready for 10 amps is category 2 at a thousand votes so you want to make sure you don't you want to make sure you have the right probes you don't want to use a probe that can only handle a few amps and you're testing like a am so be careful with that make sure you have how the right one here's one that we use in house which we really like because it has a really sharp it's good for like low voltage and troubleshooting don't use high voltage but this is really good when when you have to really get it on the board or a small surface mount and these are fairly cheap we got these for maybe around eight bucks and they're freely and fairly cheap but they're good for low voltage on troubleshooting and we use these a lot so fluke 117 has all the necessary feature that you would want on there let's look at this one real quick the fluke 77 let's take 117 out so the fluke 77 is one like I said is on my workbench that I use a lot and it doesn't have a lot of features it just has the off AC DC voltage millivolts resistance diode and continuity and your your amp meter so AC and DC has the same has the same feature as this one right here and this one right here I forgot to mention too is a category three is up to 600 volts only so don't don't go testing anything with a thousand volts because your blows me up this one right here is DC a thousand votes and then you see there 750 for AC and these are my amperage this is if I won't want to test three hundred milli amp or ten am I then that's that's basically I got to make sure I put it on the right one what I normally do is I normally just put it on the 10 amp and they read fine and this right here just just an auto range if you want it to if you can't really find a good signal I'll just hit the one second and then it'll try to find find whatever voltage it is again typical meter has all this function that you need so let's put this to the side and then let's look at this bad boy this I really love this meter if I turn it on I won't go through all the features because it's gonna take too long I'm already too long in this video already but it has everything from what we just talked about like the low impedance the the automatic voltage the AC millivolt available DC even have a for reading temperature I lost the word for it so you guys know what I'm talking about and then you guys right here you have the option of resistance or option of of the continuity and there's no also ns I'm not quite sure what that is I never use it so forgive me I don't know what that is I mean on this section here you have your diet and your capacitors and then you have your amps right milliamps amps micro micro amp and this is just a low resistance reading so cool feature right as you can see this plug right here goes for all these and then this is my common this is 400 milli amp and this is up to 10 M here is the light alright I need to come on and this info right here is really good because if you like me you don't know everything so if I hit info it's gonna tell me to see if I could zoom in on here you see how this is there and and then I could see that I could scroll down or up but it tells me it tells me what it is like so it says continuity detects and then it tells me intermittent openings short lasting a little bit as one millisecond these brief contact causes the mirror to admit blah blah right I could hit next for measuring resistance I could go back I felt one more I hit more if I want to close it I'll close it but if I if I'm going to find out what that NS is let's find out what that is so apparently my battery right here is low buzzers need to take it out and I'll show you guys since off right that's my off let me back this out I'm afraid I had to look closely on it there's a there's a little know if you guys could see it there but you can see those lock see how that right there is I couldn't tell from looking from where I'm at and that bakes it unlocks it and then I could just pull this out and you could see what fuses in here which is very cool if I ever blow it I could replace it and then here is my batteries so I might as well gonna replace my battery now so hold on tight okay I put my battery back in and everything should be working out like my lice it's coming all good so but got it all in and just just to kind of go over these these are just features of this thing there's there's I don't remember if I mentioned a while ago but yeah I could I could go in here and hit this info and it will tell me all what it means again I don't know what that ns means I'll have to look it up but if I need to let me exit out of this if I need to like record which is the good feature about this right here is I could go in like a set up I could set up all the things here from like like reset to meter information instrument let's do meter info it'll tell me all the information about it and so if I want to close out could do that I could go back and hit the menu and just kind of like I hit the wrong one let's exit back clothes hit menu it just gives me all different options here's where I get I could save like if I wanted to record my voltage I could hit save and then I could go in here and I could I could save alright so it would start recording I couldn't I can name it but if I want to save it I could do that I could view whatever I've saved I could even delete if I want to record I could hit record and then I could set my duration right now is set to 11 minutes and I could do that I have 97% memory left but I don't want to do that so let's not do that if I want his setup right I could like I could set know like let my threshold but I think I might have done that Woggle but yeah there's just a lot of things I could mess with in here like display we could do that we could do set order time of day even format so there's a lot of things this this little thing could do and that's why I really love it but I use this as I do any other meter just so that's why I was saying that just figure out what you guys need and then go out there and buy what you guys need to do your job so this is a little bit about the multimeter has a lot of function for it and then I'm gonna get a board and kind of show you guys a little bit about know about it so I'm gonna go through and kind of go through this really quick because I know I've spent a lot of time on this video already but if I have a bore like this this is a switch mode power supply board for a drive servo drive but basically what I would do first is I would put it on the dial setting and in this case right here I have to go through here I set it to the dial setting it but they see that that's what I would do I will use that as my continuity so I'm gonna check here's the fuse here I'm gonna check this fuse and then I'm gonna check a diode here right it's so quick just gonna check all these diodes there's like two diodes in here if you guys can see it just quickly check these diodes and just look at all these diodes I could go through and his check just make sure that I'm getting a voltage drop so what I do is I'll just go through and check all these diodes out and you can see there it it has some kind of its product across a a capacitor that's why you can see it charging so you could do that if I want to test ohms I could come in here I could I could check these resistors out and this is like a 10 ohm or 11 home there's a product like a tolerance on there and I could go through and just check check these dials out mostly times these little small quarter watt diet quarter watt resistors don't have problems anyways a lot of times your caps and your your main power these are MOSFETs that's in here right I could I could flip it around and it'll be here I'll put it on the dyno setting and I'll just make sure that they're not short got a change back to diode all many things I'm gonna shake and seal there shorty so I could go and do that if I wanted to I'm not if I wanted to check my capacitor it's not good to be checking capacitors in circuit with these meter not recommended like this one right here this capacitor here you see how what's the this is a 100 microfarad at 400 volts this one's checking fine but this is not ideal okay these are not made to be on test and surrogate let me this is uh it says 100 microfarad for this one and this is these are for 70 so I'm gonna check these guys out and see if if I'm actually getting any kind of reading for microfarad 177 of michael fairy so not recommended we normally just replace his cap so how we the main thing we use these for is to check voltages do a diode check if we needed to do continuity we could we could do continuity and if I need a trace where this right here goes I could check for continuity so he goes here and a plug goes someone else to I don't know where but that's mainly what we we do with it if I'm gonna power it up which I'll go ahead and power up alright so board is powered up if I want to measure DC voltage I set to the DC I want to find my common which I know is over here because of this bus cap is negative here and then that would be my comment I also know that I think this pin here is common and if I wasn't measure voltage I get 15 I should get negative 15 and then about 23 votes so if that's my comment I want to check my voltages meeting 15 there and just going around its just check my voltages 0 15 15 15 15 this is going to be zero because that's my ground 15 if I want to check over here in a 13-0 so if I want to do that I could I could check those out ACS the same thing but those are basically the only thing that we would do as far as checking out or troubleshooting knowing our votes is just checking if it's there and then mainly using using the diode and resistance and continuity to check it so I think that's pretty much it for the multimeter is pretty straightforward it has a lot of features but doesn't mean that you're gonna use all of it and we do this every day and we don't use all of the features but we just have the capability capabilities to do it so that's it for this one and I'll see you guys on the next one

Channel: Electronic Tech

Views: 8,232

Keywords: How to use a multimeter, multimeter, fluke, digtal multimeter, how to use a digital multimeter, how to test amps with a multimeter, how to test multimeter, how to use a multimeter to check voltage, how to use a multimeter to check continuity

Id: Vrc_yd4jpJo

Length: 38min 43sec (2323 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 18 2019