Originally Posted by JHZR2
This thread is interesting to me, so I pulled some gear out. I put a battery on a charger with a battery minder.
To get it so that I could try the A and mA ranges, I had to switch between meters. I had blown the 400mA in my big fluke, so it worked out (meters won't allow dual current paths).
I did a dry run connecting the charger to the battery, and went about my way. I was pleased to see good alignment.
I wanted to test the A vs mA readings, so I had to disconnect and start again. I ran with the charger in constant voltage mode. The battery was fully charged so the current dropped rapidly, as expected.
Once the current was below 400, I put the two meters in parallel, the big one in 10A mode, the smaller one in mA mode. They shared about 60/30% (sensible since the 10A path will be lower resistance) and then I pulled the lead on the bigger meter.
Left it for a number of hours, meters went to sleep, then I woke them back up. I didn't set the smaller meter on dc mA, so the reading is not correct.
Different readings were strange, so I removed both clamp meters and re-zeroed them.
So that's strange. But I figured this might be insightful for showing folks my concerns and why I have somewhat of a lack of confidence in truly knowing what is the right value...
According to the pictures, that is accurate enough for me to buy a DC amp clamp. However, it is tricky on how to clamp it on to get a proper reading.