Last year I went down to Keysight for a course, and got a tour of their cal labs. I spoke to the person showing us around about the 3457A battery. He said if the battery was less than £35 or so, it could be replaced free of charge when the instrument was calibrated.
So despite my 3457A's battery must be on its last legs, I decided not to bother replacing it, as I thought Keysight would do it free. The other more serious reason is that I can't seem to find a suitable battery in the UK. This from Mouser The Panasonic BR-2/3AE5SPN https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/panasonic-bsg/BR-2-3AE5SPN/P226-ND/61161 looks like it will do the job, and is less than $6 in the USA, but I can't get one in the UK. Anyway, my meter was sent to Keysight for a technical evaluation, and today I received a quote * Keysight calibration with uncertainties £140 (GBP) * Repair (time and material) £289.35 (GBP) * Total £429. All + 20% VAT So far from being free, they now want a serious amount of money to replace the battery! It's more than a third of the cost of a brand new 6.5 digit meter, with the complete battery and calibration costing more than 50% of the price of a new 6.5 digit meter. With eBay being a counterfeiters paradise, I will not buy a battery from there. None of the UK companies I find have something that looks suitable. I might try to find someone in the USA who will post me one by surface mail. That should avoid all the problems with air transport of lithium batteries. Dave _______________________________________________ volt-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volt-nuts and follow the instructions there.
