Howdy! My name is Walter and I'm a small businessman who lives in Sydney, Australia. I own a number of small retail places which sell a range of fruit and vegetables. Last year, I had a few problems caused by inaccurate scales. When my staff weighed a customer's purchases, the reading was incorrect. As you can probably imagine, this caused a lot of upset and distress. As soon as I became aware of the problem, I contacted a scale calibration service. The contractor who visited my shops was really great and my scales now work perfectly. Since then, I've learnt a lot about how to maintain scales.
Jobs You Can Use a Multimeter For
Available in analogue and digital forms, multimeters are multi-functional tools which offer electricians and electrical engineers a wide variety of functions. You can use them like an ammeter, as a voltmeter or an ohmmeter depending on your particular requirement. Most are handheld devices that are, therefore, portable and designed to be used in the field. Equally, the function well in bench testing situations. They come with positive and negative probes as well as an indicator needle which is sometimes replaced by an LCD digital display depending on the model. Analogue models don't need a battery to function, something that is required if you want to use a digital version.
A multimeter is commonly put to use in order to test batteries, to check on household and office wiring, to confirm the function of electric motors and to make sure power supplies are in good working order. Various tests can be conducted in order to make these sorts of checks by electrical engineers. All they need to do is to change modes using the rotary dial in order to switch applications. What are they?
Temperature Applications
Measuring the level of heat is a common function of these devices. As such, they can offer a low-cost alternative to a digital thermometer in a weather station. Digital multimeters (DMMs) can also provide internal temperature measurements of electrical circuits. DMMs are, therefore, often use to find overheating components on a circuit board, for example.
Voltage Applications
Both high and low voltage measurements are possible with these devices where the voltage value is displayed within moments of the probes being placed onto a DC circuit. This is ideal for measuring the performance of a battery-powered circuit, for instance. Helpfully, you can also measure the peak to peak voltage of a device as well as recording the DC average measurement of a circuit.
Current Applications
Direct current measurement is also possible using these measurement tools in much the same way as measuring voltage. Crucially, the true root mean square (RMS) of alternating currents can also be established quite simply. This means that domestic wiring can be tested using them, too.
Resistance Applications
There are three types of resistance measurements that can be taken using these multi-function meters. Firstly, micro-ohm meter measurements are possible. You can also use two further modes with most models. They measure the resistance of a circuit under constant voltage conditions as well as to measure resistance with a constant current being applied.