Hewlett Packard 34401a

Since March 2015 I am an owner of HP 34401a, one of the top range multimeters, which is also bench multimeter. I can measure voltage, current, 2 wire and 4 wire resistance measurement, frequency and so on. Since it is used peace of equipment, but said it was calibrated not too long ago, I wanted to compare it to something, something that would be even better.

Luckely, Faculty of Electrical Engineering was kind enough, so that I could compare my meter to theirs, agilent 34420a, 7 and 1/2 digit nano volt/micro ohm meter.

Here are some results. Using Fluke 731B as DC reference standard:

Here is 1Vdc output:

10Vdc output:

To use higher voltage, we used HP 6205B dual supply, wired in series, to get around 100v

Next was to read around 100mV and this is the result:

And some random voltages:

Since 34420a is not multimeter, we used 1R etalon, 0.01% for 0.1 nominal current, 0.03% for full current, max current being 3A. So my 34401a will read in amp, while 34420a will read voltage on that 1R:

10mA

100mA

310mA, note that my hand meter is reading 2mA high all the time

Also tested 4 wire resistance, on 100m and 10mR, both readings were ~3mR high, so still usable down to 10mR, very nice

I think this was 360€ well spend, don't you think so?

Hidden 10mA AC range

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