Took me 4 years to realize I was using my multimeter wrong

Was trying to diagnose a dead power supply at work last week, been chasing a ghost for 2 hours. My coworker Jenna walked over, looked at my setup, and just said "you got the leads in the wrong ports dude." Turns out I had been using the 10A port for everything since I started fixing gear in 2020. Anyone else ever have that moment where you realize you've been doing some basic thing wrong for way too long?

3 comments

3 Comments

wyattramirez2d ago

@pat_harris you’ve probably been blowing fuses inside the meter that whole time.

jamesc792d agoTop Commenter

Whoa, I gotta disagree with you there Pat. In my experience, a meter that won't read amps is missing a pretty big part of the picture. If you're trying to figure out if a motor is pulling too much current or a circuit is overloaded, you're pretty much flying blind without that amp reading. And blowing fuses inside the meter can mess with the accuracy of your voltage and resistance readings too, even if it still shows something. Take this with a grain of salt, but I've seen dirty fuses or partial shorts cause flaky readings that lead you down the wrong path. Your mileage may vary, but I'd want it fixed before I trusted it on anything serious.

pat_harris2d ago

Wait, is this really that big of a deal though? Like the meter still reads volts and ohms either way right, just maybe not amps. I wouldn't sweat it too much.