Fluke socket tester recall.

I've had enough shocks from 240V mains to know that it hurts, whether your hands are sweaty or not. It's made me more careful ;-)

Gordo

Thanks - I'll give that a try.

Your body would have a resistance depending on the environment. But it would still be a lot of current in terms of the sensation of shock it produced. Hard dry skin has pretty impressive resistance, but if it's sweaty or abraded then that reduces. As soon as the insulation value breaks down higher current will flow.

Big Clive

These test lamps use a PTC style current limiter to allow a wide voltage range. If you use them between Live and Neutral first and then do the Live to Earth test they may not pass that initial high current pulse that trips the RCD.

Big Clive

The odd one is inevitable. It's real life.

Big Clive

Clive, this might be a daft question. The 10mA your meter registers between tester & earth would be relatively unaffected by your meter's resistance on the 200mA AC range. Wouldn't the resistance of your body be much higher? If I lick my fingers and squeeze my multimeter probes, the lowest resistance I can get is well over 100k. Even touching both probes onto my tongue isn't much lower. Is there some kind of effect whereby your body's resistance drops when current starts to flow, or your grip tightens from the muscle spasms. Or does the higher voltage promote a higher current. What thinks you?

Gordo

This is a great PSA for addressing a test scenario that most of us wouldn't give much thought to. I wouldn't think twice about testing a bad ground with a regular multimeter set to Low-Z if I were getting wonky readings in the non Low-Z setting which would cause the exact same danger to someone downstream who happened to get in contact with a conduit or whatever was bonded to the bad ground. It's certainly something to keep in mind. Thanks!

Peter Argyropoulos

Thanks for the public service announcement. I have both the SM100 and its replacement T90 in my toolbox, so there is no benefit in replacing it, so I’ll be hanging onto it with caution. I do have a small moan about the T90, in that the impedance is low enough to trip the RCD if you put it between phase and earth (which is the same as would happen with a real test lamp).

Oh. Random wee Fbomb at 15:30 that you might want to censor from TheTubes...

Pixscotland

I saw that recall notice on the Screwfix website and thought it odd that Fluke would make something potentially dangerous.