Kewtech KT65 mft

[johnnymacc]

Hi guys does anyone have one of these testers and is kewtech gear as good as say megger.
Cheers in advance.
John.

 

[mayfair]

Bet you everyone with a megger says its crap!!! If it does the job use it, But im sure many will disagree.

 

[megger mark]

It good since they made some updates, the predigree is good as the stuff is made by the same company that made all the Robin gear.

.

 

[timb138]

A bit late in the day for this reply but i need to vent!

I bought one of these a month ago and am getting very frustrated with it already.

The insulation resistance tests (even on new circuits) often take forever to settle and will slowly ramp up from half a Mega Ohm until finally reaching >1999 after about 30 secs, other times it just displays immediately.

The psc and pfc are not also selective, you have to push a button to tell it if the earth and Neutral are on the same point or not and if you dont - you get an error message.

In combination with the above the loop figure is not displayed on the same screen as the PSC/PFC tests so you have to do the test three times to get the psc, pfc and earth loop impedance figures needed and thats if you remember to push the earth / neutral changeover button thing.

Also the memory is not automatic and you have to remember to push mem after each test and then enter 'site'/ 'db no' / 'circuit no' or confirm the same settings as the last test then push it again to actually save the test. This doesn't actually save any time especially as you can't print certs from the software anyway but I`ve covered that below.

The test button has a turn and lock button for repetative tests which is usefull but the button does need to be held in for over a second to get it to just do one test, a quick podge just cancels the test leaving you waiting for the test to complete.

There is a 'noise' warning if the electrical current is a bit messy and you are meant to redo the test without the ATT (rcd proof testing) turned on but most of the time it's too sensitive and says noise for a couple of seconds then gives you the expected figure... if you haven't already turned it off to go and bypass the rcd.

The biggest disappointment is the rubbish Kewreport software, which is not Win 7 compatible (I googled the programme number and found a chinese website (the programmers) to download a patch but as the site is mainly in chinese and they write software for lots of products it takes a while to figure it out).

Once you get the installer to work on your PC you need to figure out what `com port` your usb connection is on and select it from a drop down menu with 16 options (i think but a lot) then it analyses the port for about 5 minutes before saying nope it's the wrong port so you select the next one and try again.(It took me over half an hour because win 7 just calls it a generic usb port in the hardware manager and doesnt show you a number). I did later find a procedure for interrogating the computer to find the com port number but it was on one of the additional help sections after the main help file andf not in the install help section where I looked initially). BTW there is also a link to get the Win 7 patch but it is after all the help files on the `about` text file and its on pretty much the last page and not within the FAQ or common problems etc.

If you actually get this far without giving up in discust the program will not actually generate certificates, it will not even talk to any other software to generate them either.

When you eventually get the PC to talk to the tester it just gives you a table with the results in the memory so you still have to enter everything into a certificate programme manually. I`ve been onto Kewtech technical and they helpfully informed me that they were working on a certificate programme but it's not due anytime soon but that some users have been able to save the info as a csv file and written their own certificate template in Excel and linked the data to display on their own template. Well good for them!

Unfortunately I`m not a computer programmer and whilst I use excel a fair bit but this is far too advanced for me to have confidence in the fact that the correct entries were being produced time after time, it would probably need macros and it would take absolutely ages.

Maybe it's just me, but when you buy a tester that downloads to your PC into a custom programme called Kew Report then you would expect it to provide a report that can be used for the printing of certificates.

Is this Kewtechs best attempt to follow the excellent work done by the 'onsite' software developers??

A very poor knee jerk reaction to losing a foothold on the market, bordering on false advertising if you ask me.

Ahh that feels better - rant over.

Apart from the above the KT65 is a well made bit of kit small and easy to use but not as good as others I`ve tried.

It does have an earth test for checking the earth spike readings which not many multifunctions have but thats not a test you need to do very often unless you have a very rural beat.

comes with an oversizes padded bag and the actual instument case is nice tough abs type plastic with rubber feet so should survive the occasional drop though I haven't tested it (.....yet!).

My advice is buy something else.

 

[MarkieSparkie]

One of the sparks at a local college says they have reliability issues with all of their Kewtech KT64 & 65 multi-function testers, which so far, despite numerous attempts, Kewtech are unable to solve. These problems appear to be all associated with the rotary selection switch.