On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 00:39:31 GMT, "George E. Cawthon"
wrote:



Actually they are %9.95 on sale here at Harbor
Freight, digital read out. A clamp meter has two
jaws that go together forming a hole. What you do
,Vladimir, is open the jaws so you can move one of
the hot wire into the hole and then release the
jaw. The meter will show the amps in that wire
when the motor is running.

l bought, maybe at Harbor Frieght, an attachment clamp-on that works
with a multimeter, plugs into the + and - and lets me use the 2V AC
scale to measure AC amps. Unfortunately my cheap meters didn't have a
2V AC scale (more like 100 and 200 volts)

But I dug out a better meter that had one. Then I noticed that with
that scale, at the full 2V, the clamp on would be indicating 1000amps
or was it 100 and the lowest amount I could possibly measure was to
one decimal place: 0.3 amps , .0.4 amps, etc. So I wouldn't be able
to use it to measure the current in the Hot Surface Ignitor of my
friend's oven.

Then I noticed that that particular circuit was easy to open at the
wire nut, and I could just use the AC current scales on the pretty
good meter, and that's what I plan to do.

So I wouldn't recommend the accessories that plug into a regular
meter.

Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let
me know if you have posted also.