Whether meters work or not with this stuff depends on HOW they are used. If you plug a kilowatt meter into the receptacle on the generator and then plug your load into it NOTHING that happens later in the circuit will mess up the reading on that meter. NOTHING. Unless of course you short everything out and smoke the meter.
As for measuring the output, that can be fairly easy to do. Take a standard lightbulb and run it at a specific voltage using a variac and measure the amps, so that you know the watts. Now use a laser thermometer to measure the temperature of the lightbulb. Crank up the voltage a bit and record your data again. Crank it up some more and record your data again. You are creating a scale that gives you a relationship between the temperature of the lightbulb and a specific amount of watts input.
Then hook up a bunch of the same wattage lightbulbs to the output of the device and measure the temp of each one. That tells you the output in watts. IF the device will also run a chop saw, that chop saw HAS to be plugged into a receptacle. Plug a kilowatt meter into the receptacle and plug the chop saw into the meter. If the chop saw works, the kilowatt meter will work. It's that simple.
Dave
Dave
As for measuring the output, that can be fairly easy to do. Take a standard lightbulb and run it at a specific voltage using a variac and measure the amps, so that you know the watts. Now use a laser thermometer to measure the temperature of the lightbulb. Crank up the voltage a bit and record your data again. Crank it up some more and record your data again. You are creating a scale that gives you a relationship between the temperature of the lightbulb and a specific amount of watts input.
Then hook up a bunch of the same wattage lightbulbs to the output of the device and measure the temp of each one. That tells you the output in watts. IF the device will also run a chop saw, that chop saw HAS to be plugged into a receptacle. Plug a kilowatt meter into the receptacle and plug the chop saw into the meter. If the chop saw works, the kilowatt meter will work. It's that simple.
Dave
Dave
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