Fluke 787 Service Guide

Technology
at Work

When the Fluke 787 ProcessMe­ter

™

was launched five years
ago, it was the first tool to com­bine a digital multimeter (DMM)
and a loop calibrator in a single
handheld tool. It also cost less
than the price of some loop cali­brators alone. For technicians
who need to conduct a wide
variety of tests, but don’t want to
buy-and especially carry-a large
number of tools, the Fluke 787
was a welcome relief.

The versatility of Fluke’s
ProcessMeters, the Model 787
and the recently released Model
789, makes them the tool of
choice for engineers and techni­cians across a wide variety of
industries — from oil pipelines
and pulp plants to biotech
companies.

Fluke ProcessMeter

™

proves that less can
be more

Separating oil from
water

When you’re working less than
20 miles from the Arctic Ocean
on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline,
performance and reliability are
absolute requirements for tools.
For the last two years, Bob Cur­tis, an instrument technician for
Phillips Alaska, Inc., has used his
Fluke ProcessMeter for a wide
variety of critical measurements.

Curtis works at Phillips’
Kuparuk Oil Field facility, where
water and gas are separated
from crude oil in preparation for
shipment down the pipeline. He
performs maintenance on the
process instrumentation and con­trols, including a variety of
devices ranging from transmitters
and valves to PLC’s and DCS
control systems.

His Fluke ProcessMeter has
simplified his life by combining
many functions into one tool.
Using the voltmeter function, he
measures power supplies, loop
voltages, control circuit voltages,
and incoming ac line power. The
current meter portion is handy
for measuring loop currents. Cur­tis uses the frequency function
for several measurements includ­ing frequency in ac lines and
power supply regulators. Another
critical application is measuring
the frequency of turbine meters
for flow measurement and the
frequency from magnetic speed
pickups on rotating equipment
(turbines, pumps). The analog
output feature is used primarily
for driving 4-20 mA loops to sig­nal inputs, I/P’s, and valve posi­tioners that take a 4-20 mA
input directly. The resistance
portion of the meter is used for
checking loop resistances, device
impedances and continuity.

From the Fluke Digital Library @ www.fluke.com/library

2 Fluke Corporation Fluke ProcessMeter™ proves that less can be more

“I’ve used Fluke multimeters
for years because they’re easy to
use and reliable,” said Curtis. “I
used to use a Fluke 87 because
of the auto-ranging and record
capabilities it had. When the
Fluke 787 was introduced with
the integrated analog output
capability, it allowed me to carry
less test equipment because I
could drive devices with my
Fluke.”

For work and home

Working as an electrician for
Bethlehem Steel Corp., the
nation’s second largest inte­grated steel producer, you have
several responsibilities. There’s
the normal day-to-day electrical
work and troubleshooting, and
for Phil May and his partner,
there’s also the responsibility of
taking care of all the ac variable
frequency control drives for the
coal injection facility — 58 to be
exact.

Tuning the drives was the job
of an outside vendor until a cou­ple of years ago, when Fluke
ProcessMeters were brought to
May’s attention by an outside
motor drive technician. Looking
over the specifications, he was
impressed by the accuracy and
the many testing capabilities
available with one tool.

“We use our Fluke ProcessMe­ter for setting up the 4-20 mA
signals for our variable frequency
drives and we also use it for nor­mal troubleshooting work just
about every day,” said May. “It
has really speeded up the way
we’re able to get our job done.”

Meeting regulations

Biotech companies focus on the
research, development and com­mercialization of products manu­factured utilizing biotechnology
principals. Throughout the entire
process they must follow exten­sive regulations from both
domestic and foreign govern­ments. Greg Fletcher, an instru­mentation technician for Amgen,
the world’s largest biotechnology
company, understands the
importance of calibrating instru­mentation used for testing and
validation. That’s why he uses a
Fluke ProcessMeter.

“I’ve been using the Process­Meter to source and measure 4­20 mA as long as they’ve been
available,” said Fletcher. “I chose
the 787 because of its sourcing
current and low cost, and
because of my past experience
with Fluke and their products.”

24 in, 12 out

John Gale, electrical engineer for
ACS, a company that designs
and manufactures incineration
and scrubber systems, wears a
lot of hats. He’s responsible for
the development, design, pro­gramming and engineering of
industrial control, data acquisi­tion and continuous emissions
monitoring systems.

Some of ACS’s systems will
have 24 current loop inputs and
12 current loop outputs that must
be calibrated at commissioning
and during routine maintenance
and calibration intervals. Gale’s
challenge was having the
patience to go through each loop
several times to verify the accu­racy of the equipment under cal­ibration. But using a Fluke
ProcessMeter has speeded up the
time it takes him to calibrate the
systems because of the combina­tion of a traditional multimeter
with a current loop calibrator
and its large display, which is
easy to read at a glance. This
eliminated one piece of equip­ment plus the extra batteries and
test leads that he had to cart
around when he went into the
field.

“The ProcessMeters are
rugged, accurate, reliable, and
easy to use,” explained Gale. “I
have over 30 years experience in
the electronic/electrical industry
and I’ve used about every type of
meter that has been manufac­tured. I’ve found that Fluke
meters are the most reliable and
maintain their accuracy over a
longer period of time.”

Making water safe

Seattle Public Utilities supplies
drinking water to more than 1.3
million people in the Seattle/
King County, WA area. To ensure
that the tap water is safe, they’re
required to meet all federal
drinking water quality standards
for public water systems.

Lee Dilley of Seattle Public
Works is one of many people
responsible for meeting these
standards. He installs, repairs,
replaces and calibrates a wide
variety of electronic equipment
used for managing the drinking
water. To calibrate 4-20 mA loops
in chlorine analyzers, pressure
transducers, speed controllers,
and other industrial equipment,
Dilley uses a Fluke ProcessMeter.

“I’ve used the 787 for four
years now and what I like most
about it is the ease of use and
that the 4-20 mA output and
input is shown in percentage as
well as current,” said Dilley. “I
started using Fluke over 25 years
ago. I still have my original meter
and it still works great! I think
that speaks for the reliability and
quality of Fluke products.”

Generating clean power

Public Utility District No. 1 Chelan
County is a hydro-generating
plant on the Columbia River in
Washington State. The district’s
three hydroelectric generating
projects have a combined total
generating capacity of over 2,000
megawatts of low-cost, clean,
renewable power and produce 9
million megawatts of power each
year – enough to meet the needs
of a city of more than 900,000
people.

Rock Island, one of the dis­trict’s two hydro projects, is part
of an 11-dam system on the
Columbia River. Mike Kerns, elec­trician foreman for Rock Island,
and his crew of electricians main­tain all the electrical equipment
within the two powerhouses at
Rock Island Dam. They trou­bleshoot problems with hundreds
of systems involved with the
plant, from high voltage trans­formers and generating units
down to simple lighting circuits,
and there’s also the pump sys­tems, variable speed cranes, com­puter I/O circuits, spill gates,
emergency diesel generators and
fiber optics. In addition, they take
care of maintenance and trou­bleshooting at a high voltage sub­station that feeds the national
grid and a large Alcoa aluminum
plant.

“We cover a wide spectrum of
equipment which all involves the
use of one type of meter or
another,” explained Kerns. “I’ve
used a Fluke ProcessMeter for
about a year and I just purchased
another one for my crew.”

The 787 is used as a volt/ohm
meter in troubleshooting and as
a current signal transmitter for
4-20 mA signals for various elec­tronic controllers. “The reason I
went to the 787 was because of
the built-in 4-20 mA current
source/simulator. We use this for
calibrating electronic tempera­ture, pressure sensing, and other
equipment using current signals.”

Bringing light to
darkness

For Doug Gray and Jon Peterson,
instrument technicians for
Alyeska Pipeline Service Com­pany, reality is working in the
dark 75 percent of the time.
Alyeska operates the Trans­Alaska Pipeline, an 800-mile,
48-inch, fully-insulated pipeline
that transports North Slope crude
oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez.

Gray is responsible for the
calibration, maintenance, and
repair of process control and life
support equipment. He uses a
Fluke ProcessMeter for personal
protection in determining if a cir­cuit has been properly isolated
for work, in measuring input
voltages to controlled devices,
feed back voltages, 4-20 mA
transmitter output, and as a
source for 4-20 mA.

“I like the meter’s large dis­play. It’s easy to read in tight
places and lights up enough to
be used in the dark,” said Gray.
“And being able to source current
provides me two pieces of equip­ment in one. I have to travel to
remote sites wearing heavy
clothes and the less I have to
pack with me, the better.”

Peterson works on instrumen­tation and controls, fire detection
systems and electrical mainte­nance. “I’ve used a ProcessMeter
for two years calibrating control
loops on relief valve and gas tur­bine controls,” explained Peter­son. “We chose Fluke’s
ProcessMeter because it’s
smaller, its battery lasts much
longer, and the meter’s range is
continuous.”

Working in the arctic environ­ment and at remote locations is
challenging and having equip­ment they can depend on is crit­ical. “Fluke has always provided
a quality device,” said Gray. “I
acquired my electronics degree
using Fluke equipment in college
and it is the test equipment pre­ferred by my company and by
industry.”

789 – The super-sized
ProcessMeter

So how do you make a mission­critical tool even better? When
Fluke recently introduced the
Fluke 789 ProcessMeter, it added
a display that’s 200-percent
larger than the 787, with
enhanced backlighting and two
brightness settings for easy
readability.

Fluke went back to these
same technicians to have them
test the functionality of the 789
in the same work environments
as before. And while the super­sized display was the most
notable improvement, the addi­tion of a 24-volt loop power
supply, a HART

®

mode with a
built-in 250 ohm resister with
loop power, improved battery
power with four AA batteries,
0-100 % mA span check buttons
to toggle from 4 to 20 mA, and
an infrared I/O serial port com­patible with FlukeView

®

Soft-

ware were also valued changes.

“What I liked best about the
789 is the enlarged, easy-to­read display, the molded-on
case, and the 0-100 % span
check for the 4-20 mA output,”
said Bethlehem Steel’s Phil May.

“I like that the 789 is a com­bination of multiple meters and
source devices,” added Doug
Gray of Alyeska Pipeline. “And
it’s compact and durable.”

Some sites used the 789 for
a specific measurement while
others used it for a variety of
measurements.

“I used the 789 for voltage
checks, current readings and
current sourcing,” said Greg
Fletcher of Amgen.

Phillips Alaska’s Bob Curtis
reported that his crew used the
789 on a variety of equipment,
for a wide range of measure­ments, including:

•

Voltmeter function to measure
power supplies, loop voltages,
and control circuit voltage;

•

Current meter function to
measure loop currents;

•

Frequency function for meas­uring ac line frequency, fre­quency from turbine meters
for flow measurement, and
frequency from magnetic
speed pickups on rotating
equipment (turbines, pumps,
etc.);

•

Analog output primarily for
driving 4-20 mA loops to
signal inputs for I/P’s and
valve positioners, and to simu­late 4-20 mA inputs to DCS
for loop checking;

•

Resistance function to check
grounds on a newly installed
Bently Nevada’s 3500 Series
Machinery Protection System.

To these technicians, the 789
was more than super-sized – it
was a valuable improvement to
an already valuable tool.

3 Fluke Corporation Fluke ProcessMeter™ proves that less can be more

Fluke Corporation

PO Box 9090, Everett, WA USA 98206
Fluke Europe B.V.

PO Box 1186, 5602 BD
Eindhoven, The Netherlands

For more information call:
In the U.S.A. [phone] or
Fax [phone]
In Europe/M-East/Africa (31 40) 2 675 200 or
Fax [phone]
In Canada (800) 36-FLUKE or
Fax [phone]
From other countries [phone] or
Fax [phone]
Web access: http://www.fluke.com

©2003 Fluke Corporation. All rights reserved.
Printed in U.S.A. 1/2003 2067485 A-ENG-N Rev A

Fluke. Keeping your world

up and running.