PCB has much larger thermal mass than a piece of wire. Also it's non
trivial to obtain and maintain good copper banana jacks, so all the
issues that are mentioned like airflow/heat
gradients/contamination/oxidation are magnitude worse in convenient PCB
method.
Piece of copper wire on the other hand is readily available and can be
cut/cleaned and bent at minute notice and discarded afterwards without
much regret. Fluke itself wrote neat paper about typical misconceptions
and errors shown in various shorting methods.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/metrology/copper-tellurium-perhaps-not-the-best/?action=dlattach;attach=2479121
I use AWG16 or AWG20 bare copper wire, a piece about 150mm length, bend
it into four "U-shaped pins" and shove each "pin" into banana socket for
safety jacks in bench DMM, or just wrap around proper binding posts for
more serious long-scale DMMs.
To keep wire secure I've plugged each socket with "calibrated" Q-tip
which does not have much thermal mass and goes just tight enough. Here's
a photo from previous use for adjusting and calibrating Keithley 2002
DMM: https://xdevs.com/doc/Keithley/2002/fix_lc/kei2002_cal.jpg
This short settles in a minute or two and very low-cost. No PCBs, no
screws, no gold over nickel plating needed and takes 30 seconds to
"manufacture". If you paranoid about finger oils, you can wear gloves
too. Now with 884X DMM there is additional challenge with it's finicky
split connectors but most other bench DMMs would have blind sockets
which are not a problem. Hope this answers the question?
P.S. One can also solve the "problem" root cause and get rid of the
safety banana jacks altogether, as I did before for one of my Keithleys
- https://xdevs.com/article/kei2002ltc/
On 09/02/2025 10:47 PM, Radu via volt-nuts wrote:
Maybe nothing, though there’s the convenience of the PCB with the pullout
plastic loop. Less chance of contamination on the copper connector - both
heat/emf with any associated stabilization wait and/or finger grease etc. - but
as we’re discussing alternatives, would you please elaborate on what
specifically you’re using for this type of short? What gauge copper, shorting
how?
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