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Had to pick between a $60 USB scope or a $400 Fluke multimeter last week
My old multimeter finally died after 10 years. I was looking at a cheap USB microscope to check solder joints and a Fluke 117 for general troubleshooting. I went with the Fluke because I do more house calls than board repairs. First job was a PSU that wouldn't start. The Fluke found a bad cap in 2 minutes. Customer paid $80 cash. Still wondering if the scope would've been better for the money though. Anyone else skipped the cheap tool and regretted it later?
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lindaw123mo ago
Hang on, you're saying a $60 USB scope would have found that bad cap faster than the Fluke? Because a scope's more for looking at ripple and noise, not for testing capacitance or voltage drop across a cap. I mean, you'd still need a multimeter to measure ESR or capacitance anyway, right? So you'd have to buy both tools eventually, or just waste time trying to figure out a waveform you can't even read without a baseline. That $80 job basically paid for half the Fluke already, so it sounds like you made the call for your actual workload. Unless you're doing RF board repairs where you need to see signal integrity, I don't see how a cheap scope would have helped you on a house call.
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margaret993mo ago
Don't you think a scope shows you the problem immediately without needing to guess which cap is bad?
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