Re: An OT oscilloscope question

If the signal you want to see is small to the DC voltage - use the AC coupled
switch on the input and look at only the AC waveform.

Martin
Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH & Endowment Member
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder



Don Bruder wrote:
In article <e6mnu1l4fo47jnfa38sv8bj4lmr6vjl3oh@xxxxxxx>,
Eric R Snow <etpm@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


I been havin' fun with my TEK 465B 'scope. But now I want to do
something serious. Check the output of a couple generators. I have a
1X/10X probe. Do I just set the 'scope to the right volts/div, the
probe at 10x, and touch the probe to the hot wire? Should the ground
clip from the probe be connected to the generator ground? I ordered
the manual but it hasn't arrived yet.


As long as the output is within what the scope can handle, I'd set to 1x, adjust the V/div as needed, and go. Yes, use the ground clip.

If the output from the genny is too high for the scope to handle straight, you're going to need to "dump" some of it - Since I assume you're wanting to do this to look at the waveform the genny is putting out, you'll want a "pure resistance" load so that inductance doesn't interact with/alter whatever ripple is present. A car headlight or three wired in series would likely do the job quite nicely, dropping the voltage without affecting the waveform.

Expect it to be a rather boring picture, though. You'll likely need to dial the scale way up to see the ripple on an otherwise flat line when looking at a generator output.

For an alternator, on the other hand, depending in spin speed/design intents, it could be anything from dreadfully boring to rather interesting to watch.


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