A Box of PPMs

While I have quite a nice handheld multimeter, I decided that for bench work it would be nice to have a bench multimeter. These have a few advantages, the most important of which is that they're designed to work on a workbench, so you don't have to prop them up at some weird angle to see the display and worry about it getting knocked over and so on. Additionally, they tend to be quite a bit more accurate and precise than handheld meters, and they also don't eat batteries.

So off to eBay I went, and I found this lovely HP 34401A.

And by "lovely" I mean "filthy." But the display was nice and bright (VFD displays tend to dim over time) and there's not much else that tends to go wrong with these other than the flip up handle breaking.

Yeah the flip-up handle is broken.

Thankfully I don't have a pressing need for it, but in the future I'll probably look at making a new one. You can actually get new and reproduction ones on eBay, usually in a kit that includes the bumpers, for $50. However, I don't really feel like spending that money on something that'll most likely just break again.

At least I don't right now. In the future? Who knows, only time will tell.

Anyway, this needs cleaning. The main case is easy enough to clean up with some simple green, plus a bit of penetrating oil to loosen up the residue left behind from the asset tags of the business that this totally wasn't stolen from. To clean the bumpers, a little silicone oil shines them up really beautifully.

Yeah, that's a difference.

I did try to glue the two parts of the handle back together with super glue, but that went about as well as you might expect.

It really did clean up amazingly once I was done, and it didn't even take much elbow grease.

So we just need to make room for it on my workbench, and I think just below my shamefully cheap signal generator is a nice place for it.

And today I discovered that this cheap 6Ω power resistor that I got off of amazon is remarkably accurate.

This meter is paying for itself already!