Wide variety of test leads out there. Anybody have any recommendations for replacements (and a source)? My Protek takes 4mm banana plug style, looks like the female contact in the meter is recessed about 8 mm down an 8mm hole. I would like hard tipped ones. EBay and Amazon have a lot of name brand (right!!) ones, but who knows. Not looking for cheap, just quality. Here's a picture of one like mine.
The tip broke off one of my leads.
My experience with those meters is that the leads break off where they are soldered to the probe tip . I pull the tip , strip the wire , and resolder .
I have bought, and use these probes:
$3.79 USD, and free shipping.
Doesn't work with "moulded on" tips though - which are pretty much standard today.
There are a couple of problems with cheap meter leads.
Can't tell from your picture, but if the end that plugs into the meter has a cylindrical plastic shield that surrounds the banana plug, sometimes the cylinder is too thick to fit into the hole in the meter.
Second is lead flexibility. Sometimes they start out stiff. Often they become stiff with age. Leads that age well are easy to spot once you know what to look for...and have them in your hand. Hard to describe, but the plastic is not shiny.
Buying a cheap lead set off EBAY will likely get you stiffed.
O.K. That looks like the ones for my Fluke -- and I've gotten replacement lead sets from MSC made by Fluke.
They have a plastic insulating sleeve which is a continuation of the right-angle strain relief on the end of the cable.
They are very good leads in my opinion.
Just verified -- 4mm holes, and the connector starts 7mm under the front panel.
Adequate reason to replace the set -- and use the old leads for building some kind of test fixture -- or hanging alligator clips on the end.
Good Luck, DoN.
Duh! Forgot about home depot. In stock, $16.50 out the door. They seem very well made. Thanks.
Might even have come off the same cottage assembly line in China.
snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
In Gunner's defense, they're probably every bit as good as the leads that came on the meter to begin with, and even the Klein Tools version may well have been made in China.
Unless you're doing HV stuff, "any-ol'" lead that fits, makes good contact, and lasts a bit is fine. And truthfully, meter leads don't undergo a lot of abuse unless you have an accident, so even the cheapest leads are usually long-lasting.
I _do_ look for things like removable tip shields and proper strain relief moldings wherever the lead enters a molding.
Lloyd
Lloyd
Could be. But I can return these in a few minutes if I'm not happy with them.
They were.
These look well (enough) made. And I got them in less than half an hour, which allowed me to do what I needed to do immediately, instead of some time in the next week or so.
Steve Walker fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:
Heh! I live far enough out in the country so that trips to the big-box stores must be planned in advance -- and sometimes take two weeks to get around to. So often, Amazon or Ebay are actually quicker!
Lloyd
And I bought several sets that meet all those requirements for under $10 canadian each.
And HD gets them directly from China.
I always bought some good flexible leads with rubber insulation and finely stranded wire... Plastic is too stiff. I was a bench tech for many years so my meter leads got plenty of use. It wasn't too uncommon for a lead wire to develop an intermittent break. Could be a real head scratcher for bit. A good test trick is to grab each end by the tips and pull. If there is a break in the wire the lead will stretch fairly easily. Odd thing is the ends of the wire look like they were cut with a knife.
Another tip is to keep the probe points sharp. Dull points will sometimes not make good contact with oxidized surfaces. Especially if covered with solder flux... It's a drag to think you just found a bunch of open diodes on a PCB and find you weren't waking good contact.
Agreed, sharp probe tips prevented a whole bunch of user errors, from skating off a pin (shorting-out chips) to taking bad readings.
I learned to (much more often) trust shorts and be skeptical of opens when it came to probing with a DVM. My tech years were short (3), not long enough to get as decent a grasp of the field of electronics as I'd hoped. The 10 months of Coleman College's Computer Electronics Technology course didn't teach me much more than the language.
And invariably less costly and more choices are available. I have Amazon Prime, so 2-day shipping is free for many, many things. I'd been paying $79/yr for the privilege, but last month it went up to $99/yr for Prime. It's worth it to me.
Ordering direct from China takes 2-7 weeks and shipping is usually free, though. Most of the time, the time frame is not a problem. When it is, Amazon comes through for a buck or less more money and damnear instant shipping.
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