Hey forum I have many driver laying around and have no idea what Amps they are is there anyway I can test them on my bench to check ? If so how ?
You could connect the drivers up to an LED with a very low value sense resistor in series and measure the voltage across that resistor.
I’ll see if I can find a vid sorry kinda new and have no idea how to do that I don’t think lol
If you are sure none of your drivers can output more than 10 amps, then you can use just mutlimeter. Most multimeters can measure currents up to 10 amps (for 15 seconds with breaks for cooldown, read multimeter’s manual).
But just in case check if your multimeter has a fuse on the 10 amps line (usualy there’s a corresponding caption on a multimeter).
And when measuring currents with multimeter take care of proper contact. Probe’s pin will be a bottleneck, so better use alligators.
Multimeter must be connected in series with actual load (LED), otherwise you’ll create a short circuit.
If they are 7135 based drivers you can just count the 7135 chips and multiply that by 350mA - 380mA.
If they are Direct Drive FET drivers the current is limited by the entire circuit (Wires, Battery, Switch, LED) so keep that in mind.
If they are Convoy Drivers you can compare them to the ones Simon has listed on his site:
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Thank u, the driver I have is on a red board and has a square chip that says 4R7 I would post a pic but says file is to large
So far I have a fluke meter, power supply, driver
So if I take the power supply and get 6v to the driver and have a test led wired to the driver where do I put my fluke leads on the driver ?
You should search YouTube for “How to measure current with multimeter” or “How to measure current with shunt”.
Crop the photo and it should upload.
Is it 17mm, 20mm or 22mm?
Not the probe is the bottleneck, the current shunt inside the meter is the problem. Its burden voltage will make the reading pretty useless on many types of drivers. Only way to get good readings is to use a clamp meter above a few mA.
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If you use a DMM to measure amps it’s best to have short and thick leads, otherwise your readings will potentially be way off.
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What difference does it make to have a few milliohms more or less from the cable if you already have 100 milliohm from the shunt in the multimeter?
The safest way, post good picture of your drivers, chances are we will identify most of them, if not all, since some of us been dealing with them for decades.
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