Now and then — in any hacker’s lab — the need to measure large currents comes up. Most multimeters have a 10A range, which is okay, but it often has a significant burden voltage and accuracy isn’t great unless you have a fairly high-end meter. And 10A can be limiting — sometimes the need to measure 50A @ 0.7V comes up. Well, this beefy, heavy-duty 200A current shunt is a great addition to any lab.
With a 10A per V output, any decent multimeter can get precise current measurements. Power this shunt with 24V and you can easily measure right up to the 200A limit! Now that’s a lot of power current!
The bandwidth of the measured signal can be important, and this shunt has a bandwidth of about 7.5kHz — enough to do some low-frequency measurements, but mostly useful for large, power-hungry DC loads.
It was originally developed to help measure a huge DC power supply, and this could easily be integrated into a test/measure setup for testing high-output power supplies, such as common ATX PC power supplies. Many modern ATX supplies can easily output hundreds of amps on the 12V rail, and this shunt would be very useful in characterizing the output of these supplies under heavy loads.
So if you need a reliable, well-built DC current shunt for under $25, check it out! Repowered Electronics also have other products designed for working with heavy-duty DC power.
