On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:58:21 -0700, "Calif Bill"
wrote:

Years ago while I was still in college and fixing mainframes to pay for
college, the factory engineers came out to a Beta site we had in San
Francisco area. Simpson meter is connected across the legs of a 208 3 phase
line to see how much voltage was really there. They had the meter on
milliamp scale and sounded like a 38 going off in the room. Magic smoke
curling up from the meter. except for the milliamp scale, meter worked
fine. Had blown apart the shunt resister was all. Good meter. My last
simpson died a sad death. Battery leaked and the acid wiped out most of the
internals.

The Fluke has a 1 amp fuse for the milliamp scale, and a 10 amp one
for the amp scale. Actually it is the lead car type batteries that
have the acid. Dry cells have zinc chloride which is not an acid, but
which is highly corrosive, as you noticed. Alkaline cells do not have
acid, obviously. They have potassium hydroxide, and while they are not
particularly prone to leakage, the stuff is also highly corrosive.

Casady