Managed to resist the (naked) battery SDS at Lidl for £60. They had some
batteries and single and double chargers. Bought a digital clamp meter
for £13. Only AC amps (to 600) but has separate leads for AC and DC
volts, continuity/diode, ohms and (unusually) capacitance and Hz. Nice
fast, stable 4 digit display.

Aldi had assorted diamond disks for angle grinder, and also the angled
flap type abrasive disks for 125mm angle grinder

On Thu, 08 Apr 2021 22:03:47 +0100, newshound wrote:

Managed to resist the (naked) battery SDS at Lidl for £60. They had some
batteries and single and double chargers. Bought a digital clamp meter
for £13. Only AC amps (to 600) but has separate leads for AC and DC
volts, continuity/diode, ohms and (unusually) capacitance and Hz. Nice
fast, stable 4 digit display.

Aldi had assorted diamond disks for angle grinder, and also the angled
flap type abrasive disks for 125mm angle grinder

Ta.

Bought the clamp meter for £12.99 at our local Lidl.
Described as pliers amp meter 0346215.

Haven't had a play with it yet.

Cheers


Dave R


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In article ,
newshound wrote:
Managed to resist the (naked) battery SDS at Lidl for £60. They had some
batteries and single and double chargers. Bought a digital clamp meter
for £13. Only AC amps (to 600) but has separate leads for AC and DC
volts, continuity/diode, ohms and (unusually) capacitance and Hz. Nice
fast, stable 4 digit display.

DC clamp meters tend to be rather expensive and none too accurate, sadly.
At lowish currents, anyway. Would be very useful on a car to get an easy
accurate measurement of a small(ish) current.

--
*Why is the word abbreviation so long? *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
newshound wrote:
Managed to resist the (naked) battery SDS at Lidl for £60. They had some
batteries and single and double chargers. Bought a digital clamp meter
for £13. Only AC amps (to 600) but has separate leads for AC and DC
volts, continuity/diode, ohms and (unusually) capacitance and Hz. Nice
fast, stable 4 digit display.

DC clamp meters tend to be rather expensive and none too accurate, sadly.
At lowish currents, anyway. Would be very useful on a car to get an easy
accurate measurement of a small(ish) current.


They can use Hall Probes.

https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws...ll-effect.html

There is no particular reason for them to be
expensive. It's a heavily doped piece of
semiconductor material.

Magnetic field goes in one axis.

Constant current is pumped along a second axis.

The third axis develops a voltage, which can be
buffered with an opamp before being measured with
a dual slope converter (for cheapness). It follows
the Right Hand Rule you're taught in physics. On a
clamp on ammeter, they've already arranged the jaws
to feed the Z-axis for you. Magic.

Hall Probes aren't particularly sensitive. A lab-grade
electrometer can measure currents below a picoampere.
The clamp-on DC ammeter is probably 12 orders of magnitude
less sensitive.

Where the DC ammeters excel, is measuring heavy currents without
heating effects. When I wanted to check the starter on my car,
the peak hold on the DC clamp meter could tell me the max
current was 150 amps. And nothing in the measurement kit
gets warm while doing so. A conventional multimeter, has in
small print to "not be measuring 20 amp loads without allowing
sufficient cooling time (duty cycle)". A DC clamp meter has
no such limit. It can measure a heavy current, for as long
as the nine volt battery in the meter lasts.

There is some drift in the offset voltage of the Hall Probe
and buffer amp. That's why typical DC clamp meters have
a "Zero button" on them. Part of the zeroing problem could
be attributed to the magnitude of current run through the
semiconductor detector. The one I set up for physics lab,
we were using 250mA for that, which is a lot more than a
hand-held clamp meter uses. And that's going to cause some
die heating (resistive loss). But since the sensitivity, it's
a multiplier, and multiplies the constant current times
the mag field, the higher the current, the more output
voltage. Then, if your stupid move caused a big-assed
drift, that's your fault :-) The clamp-on ammeter has
some different tradeoffs to consider. And battery life
precludes using large constant current values. The battery
budget might only have 1mA for the sensor to use, and
6mA for the meter chip.

Paul

On Thu, 8 Apr 2021 22:03:47 +0100, newshound
wrote:

Managed to resist the (naked) battery SDS at Lidl for £60. They had some
batteries and single and double chargers. Bought a digital clamp meter
for £13. Only AC amps (to 600) but has separate leads for AC and DC
volts, continuity/diode, ohms and (unusually) capacitance and Hz. Nice
fast, stable 4 digit display.

Aldi had assorted diamond disks for angle grinder, and also the angled
flap type abrasive disks for 125mm angle grinder

A link would be useful as I have no idea what you are talking about

In article ,
Scott wrote:
On Thu, 8 Apr 2021 22:03:47 +0100, newshound
wrote:

Managed to resist the (naked) battery SDS at Lidl for £60. They had some
batteries and single and double chargers. Bought a digital clamp meter
for £13. Only AC amps (to 600) but has separate leads for AC and DC
volts, continuity/diode, ohms and (unusually) capacitance and Hz. Nice
fast, stable 4 digit display.

Aldi had assorted diamond disks for angle grinder, and also the angled
flap type abrasive disks for 125mm angle grinder

A link would be useful as I have no idea what you are talking about

Go to the Lidl site and look for the 'middle of Lidl' offers. As they may
not be exactly the same everywhere in the country. And if in demand, can
sell out very quickly.

--
*If at first you do succeed, try not to look too astonished.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
Go to the Lidl site and look for the 'middle of Lidl' offers. As they may
not be exactly the same everywhere in the country. And if in demand, can
sell out very quickly.

I didn't see the clamp meter on the Lidl website - they don't appear to have
a DIY event on. There's one a week Sunday, but no clamp meter there either.

Theo

On 09/04/2021 16:02, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Scott wrote:
On Thu, 8 Apr 2021 22:03:47 +0100, newshound
wrote:

Managed to resist the (naked) battery SDS at Lidl for £60. They had some
batteries and single and double chargers. Bought a digital clamp meter
for £13. Only AC amps (to 600) but has separate leads for AC and DC
volts, continuity/diode, ohms and (unusually) capacitance and Hz. Nice
fast, stable 4 digit display.

Aldi had assorted diamond disks for angle grinder, and also the angled
flap type abrasive disks for 125mm angle grinder

A link would be useful as I have no idea what you are talking about

Go to the Lidl site and look for the 'middle of Lidl' offers. As they may
not be exactly the same everywhere in the country. And if in demand, can
sell out very quickly.

As Dave says you get regional variations. The web sites are *sometimes*
useful to provide advanced notice, for example when I wanted more 20V
batteries these showed that more naked tools were in in four weeks or so
(and they usually have batteries when they are selling naked tools). I
have a very local Lidl so I tend to drop in on Thursdays. The Aldis are
more remote so I sometimes drop in when passing.