There was some discussion in the past about installing a volt/amp gauge which can be purchased from eBay from various vendors, I picked one up a few weeks ago and it's been sitting on my desk for a month or two. I had an hour or two on Saturday to finally get motivated to install this on my flowbench to see if it would actually work.
voltampgage-1.jpg
It works quite well and is more for my comparison testing and probably not something everyone would need on their flowbench, I have it currently temp wired into the start of my SSR so when I turn on the contactor it powers up so it gives me a visual reference when I forget to turn off the contactor power switch.
At some point probably this week the way my schedule looks I'll permanent mount it in my panel as I'm converting over to full motor control on the prototype flowbench and doing away with the individual motor switches.
Well thats my plan anways and we all know how plans go . . . .
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Bruce
Who . . . me? I stayed at a Holiday in Express . . .
The interesting thing about having the meter on the flowbench is it could help to identify electrical wiring that is not adequate for the amps the bench is drawing...in the bench itself, or in the walls of the shop.
The gauge only comes with about 2-3" of wire length and it's fine wire so you have to solder on longer lengths.
The gauge costs anywhere from ~$10 to $20 depending on who you buy from and what color you want. I went cheap and bought the $9.89 one shipped from China took about 2-3 weeks. The white bezel matches my white deck plates like that matters
I'm looking for a small digital temp gauge I could also setup for testing purposes, not that I really need to do any testing now anymore with the amount of feed-back I get from the field and how well the design is working!
Always looking to refine the design though . . .
Bruce
Who . . . me? I stayed at a Holiday in Express . . .
Its also very handy if you have a powerful bench capable of blowing the main fuse or tripping a remote circuit breaker.
Nothing worse than having to keep resetting the damned thing time after time.
With an amp meter, you will pretty soon know what maximum current you can get away with, without getting plunged into darkness and total silence.
Also known as the infamous "Warpspeed" on some other Forums.
Its powered by your PC you can put the probe where you want it.
It's amazing what you can now buy from China at unbelievable prices.
Malvin's panel meter is a very good way to do this.
If you prefer something with an internal battery, how about an "indoor/outdoor digital thermometer".
These have two sensors and a dual temperature readout. One sensor is inside the unit itself to measure indoor temperature, but outdoor temperature has a probe on the end of a few feet of wire.
It's particularly handy for measuring the temperature rise of something above ambient, and the one I have is surprisingly accurate.
Also known as the infamous "Warpspeed" on some other Forums.
