Caught myself using a multimeter wrong for 4 years

Was checking continuity on a wire bundle last Tuesday and a senior tech walked over and pointed out I had my leads in the wrong jacks. Totally missed it since trade school and my readings were always off by a fraction. Anybody else realize they've been doing a basic step backwards forever?

2 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

2 Comments

thea1433mo ago

Eh, I'm not sure it's that big of a deal. If your readings were always just off by a fraction, you probably still got the job done, right? People act like the sky is falling over a tiny error in continuity checks.

3

christopherj633mo ago

Man you bring up a good point @thea143. I used to be one of those people who thought a tiny error was no big deal, like who cares if it's off by a hair right? But then I had a buddy who wired up a whole control panel using a meter that was slightly off, and it caused a bunch of intermittent shorts that took us days to trace. It was a nightmare. So yeah, I changed my mind on that one. A fraction of an ohm can snowball into a real headache if you're chaining a bunch of checks together.

2