October 11, 2024

power-tools-pro

Technology will be Here

A Homebrew AC Upgrade For The Fluke 8840A

[William Dudley] picked up a Fluke 8840A bench multimeter at an auction, but was unhappy to uncover out that it was reading through resistances inaccurately. It was also lacking the optional board to permit AC measurements. Wanting to use the normally pretty meter, he established about restoring and upgrading the machine.

Fortunately, the 8840A was from a time when Fluke used to brazenly publish schematics in its manuals. Therefore, merged with having a glance at some pictures on the net, it was straightforward for [William] to recreate the primary AC “Option 09” board to empower the ideal operation. As is ordinarily the way, his attempts didn’t do the job first time, but following some bodge wires were installed, all was well. [William] stories the measurements are “reasonable, perhaps even sufficient” with no calibration undertaken.

Repairing the resistance concern was uncomplicated. It turned out to be corrosion on the selector switches, revealed when large-resistance measurements were exact, but minimal-resistance measurements weren’t. A bit of flick-flacker with some get in touch with cleaner sprayed into the switches obtained items functioning again properly.

It is good to see aged components restored to comprehensive features, notably when it is as interesting and effectively-developed as an previous Fluke meter. Bringing back again aged tools from the useless? You know we wanna hear about it!