Used a cheap toner from Amazon on a cat5 run and it fried my tester

Picked up one of those $15 toner kits off Amazon last week to trace a line in a drop ceiling at a commercial building in Portland. Hooked it up, hit the button, and my Fluke tester gave me a error code and then just died. $400 tool gone. The toner must have been putting out way too much voltage or something. Has anyone else had a cheap tool wreck their gear like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

anthony_jackson3119d ago

You learned the hard way that cheap toner kits don't follow voltage limits. That low end gear can backfeed 48 volts or more straight into your tester and fry the input protection. Flukes are built tough but they won't survive that kind of abuse. Why would anyone risk a $400 tool to save $60 on a proper toner? Buy the cheap toner once, buy a new tester twice.

quinnperry19d ago

Actually, most cheap toners top out around 12 volts, not 48.

kimdixon18d ago

My uncle had a similar thing happen with a old toner set he bought off ebay back in 2015. He was just trying to trace a line in his basement and next thing he knew his Klein meter was acting all crazy and the ohms reading was way off. The cheap toner backfed something nasty into the tester and it never worked the same after that. So yeah @anthony_jackson31 is right, it's not worth frying a good multimeter just to save a few bucks on the toner kit.