6½ digit digital multimeters update Agilent’s range
The Agilent 34461A DMM is a direct replacement for the industry-standard Agilent 34401A DMM, and was designed to make migration easy for current users of the 34401A. The Agilent 34460A offers engineers a basic entry point to the 6½ digit class of DMMs. Compared with the 34401A DMM, the new 34461A offers expanded current ranges from 100 µA to 10 A. Both the 34460A and 34461A have a temperature measurement function (RTD/PT100, thermistor) and expanded diode measurement capability to allow engineers to measure a larger full-scale voltage (5 V) so they can test more diode types, such as LEDs.
Most DMMs show results on a low-resolution numeric display. With the Agilent Truevolt Series, engineers get a 4.3-in., high-resolution, colour display to view numerical readings, long-term trends (34461A only), measurement histograms and statistical information. They can also set display preferences and pull them up automatically the next time they start up the instrument.
Driverless easy file access USB file transfer provides simple USB connectivity between an Agilent Truevolt DMM and a PC, using the standard USB media transfer protocol. Engineers can drag and drop measurement data, instrument settings and screen images into PC applications without any additional software.
The Digital Multimeter Connectivity Utility software lets engineers control, capture and view the Agilent DMMs on their benches. With a single click they can transfer data to a PC via USB, GPIB, LAN or RS-232 (when used with older-generation Agilent DMMs).
Real-world signals are never flat. They have some level of AC signal riding on top from power line noise, other environmental noise, or injected current from the meter itself. How well a DMM deals with extraneous factors and eliminates them from the true measurement makes a big difference to its accuracy. Using the company’s own analogue-to-digital converter technology, Agilent Truevolt Series DMMs account for measurement errors created by these real-world factors. Truevolt DMMs have less than 30% of the amount of injected current attributed to the meter compared with DMMs made by other vendors. In real measurement situations, input currents create measurement errors, adding voltages to DMM results. Truevolt DMMs take care of input bias current. Other vendors’ DMMs offer 20%, to infinitely poorer, performance (some are too noisy to get any measured results).
In the 6½ digit class of meters, only Agilent uses digital direct sampling techniques to make AC rms measurements. This results in a true rms calculation and avoids the slow response of analogue rms converters used in all other vendor’s 6½ digit DMMs, allowing for crest factors up to 10 without additional error terms.
Agilent; www.agilent.com/find/TruevoltDMM
A video is available at www.agilent.com/find/Truevoltseries_video
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