battery drain
Thread Starter
TECH Apprentice
Joined: Jul 2012
Posts: 369
Likes: 4
battery drain I have a battery drain issue and for some reason I cant use my decent fluke digital VOM to check the drain on amps
or milliamps. If I use my analog gauge is starts at about 600ma and jumps to over an amp Why dont I get a reading with my digital voms. I tried a couple different digital ones.
or milliamps. If I use my analog gauge is starts at about 600ma and jumps to over an amp Why dont I get a reading with my digital voms. I tried a couple different digital ones.
Most hand-held DMMs / VOMs are not capable of measuring much over an amp, so they are pretty useless for car and home wiring other than to measure volts or resistance. You need one w/ a high-current (low resistance) sense resistor like 0.1 ohm and then measure the voltage drop across it to determine the current through the resistor. If the current is highly cyclic, digital meters will have difficulty averaging the reading to produce a stable display. Mechanical meters naturally filter the rapid variations to point towards the average.
