Following on from my review of the Keithley 2110, I tamper with the tamper-proof seal and open up the meter to see what was inside. While I am there I have a look at the build quality and the overall system architecture. Keithley have a long history of building quality test equipment and I thought it would be nice to see how the latest kit from Keithley stacks up to their past reputation.
The meter is easy to get apart and is built really well, nice solid construction and really very difficult to fault – apart from the really poor LCD display. Please see the video for the details as they unfold.
A couple of months ago I joined the element14 community and decided to sign up for a Road Test which I did, for a Keithley 2110 DMM, I was not really expecting to be selected but I was which was great – so thank you element14 for the meter and the opportunity to do this review. Now while I am not planning to turn my blog into a review site, I figure that the odd review on new kit might be nice, especially if there is the opportunity to tear it down after the review – in fact I will not do any review that does not involve tearing down the kit to have a look inside.
I have specifically made this a video review so I wont write too much about the review here, you can watch the video for the detail (and the puppies too).
In summary though, I hated the display on first site and that made me want to dislike the meter too. But apart from the display, everything else about the meter, its performance, its build quality and apparent accuracy (so far as I can tell) is absolutely first class. If I had a wish list – or more to the point, if I were in charge of sales at Keithley this is what I would have done differently…
Design in a decent display, anything other than what is in there – a nice VFD, or an OLED perhaps, or even a nicer LCD if you have to
Ship a thermocouple
Make the continuity beeper useful – its way too slow response-wise
Write the software so it can be used on Windows, Linux and OSX – it really is not that hard to do
Did I say a better display?
Lui Gough also reviewed the meter and has done a really nice write-up for his review, he also tested the software and data collection aspects of the meter, you can see his review right here: Lui Gough Keithley 2110 Review
I have had my HP 339A for a long time now and despite only using it a small handful of times it is a really great instrument – but – its big and takes up a lot of shelf space. A few weeks back a purchased a Keithley 2015 THD which is a 6.5 digit bench meter with a built in distortion analyzer, I bought it because of the distortion analyzer function. I would like to get some more instrument shelf space back so am able to replace the HP 339 with this 2015THD I will make that much-needed space. I decided to build a simple output circuit so that I can induce some crossover distortion and compare the basic measurements on these two devices to see the results. Now I must make it clear that this is a basic 101 on measuring distortion, I am sure there is a lot more to know that I do but I believe I cover off the basis.
The simple drawing I used to explain the test and test circuit.
I will tear down the HP 339A on video to show how nicely these are built. This is one of those rare “all analog” devices that has not digital parts at all, watch out for that video if you like seeing the guts of nicely built equipment.
