Ammeter

Amperemeter redirects here. For the unit of measurement, see Ampere-meter.

An ammeter is a measuring instrument used to

Demonstration model of a moving iron ammeter. As the current

through the coil increases, the plunger is drawn further into the
coil and the pointer deects to the right.

Wire carrying current to be measured.

Spring providing restoring force
This illustration is conceptual; in a practical meter, the iron core is
stationary, and front and rear spiral springs carry current to the
coil, which is supported on a rectangular bobbin. Furthermore,
the poles of the permanent magnet are arcs of a circle.

measure the current in a circuit. Electric currents are

measured in amperes (A), hence the name. Instruments
used to measure smaller currents, in the milliampere or
microampere range, are designated as milliammeters or
microammeters. Early ammeters were laboratory instruments which relied on the Earths magnetic eld for operation. By the late 19th century, improved instruments
were designed which could be mounted in any position
and allowed accurate measurements in electric power systems.

usable only when aligned with the Earths eld. Sensitivity of the instrument was increased by using additional
turns of wire to multiply the eect the instruments were
called multipliers.[1]

2 Types

History

2.1 Moving-coil
The relation between electric current, magnetic elds and
physical forces was rst noted by Hans Christian rsted
who, in 1820, observed a compass needle was deected
from pointing North when a current owed in an adjacent wire. The tangent galvanometer was used to measure currents using this eect, where the restoring force
returning the pointer to the zero position was provided by
the Earths magnetic eld. This made these instruments

The D'Arsonval galvanometer is a moving coil ammeter.

It uses magnetic deection, where current passing through
a coil placed in the magnetic eld of a permanent magnet causes the coil to move. The modern form of this instrument was developed by Edward Weston, and uses two
spiral springs to provide the restoring force. The uniform
air gap between the iron core and the permanent magnet
1

TYPES

An older moving iron ammeter with its characteristic non-linear

scale and with the moving iron ammeter symbol mounted on a
small form factor PC.

both ammeters and other meters derived from them, such

as voltmeters and ohmmeters.

Ammeter from the old Penn Station Terminal Service Plant in

New York City

2.2 Moving magnet

Moving magnet ammeters operate on essentially the same
principle as moving coil, except that the coil is mounted in
the meter case, and a permanent magnet moves the needle. Moving magnet Ammeters are able to carry larger
currents than moving coil instruments, often several tens
of Amperes, because the coil can be made of thicker wire
and the current does not have to be carried by the hairsprings. Indeed, some Ammeters of this type do not have
hairsprings at all, instead using a xed permanent magnet
to provide the restoring force.

2.3 Electrodynamic

Zero-center ammeter

An electrodynamic movement uses an electromagnet instead of the permanent magnet of the d'Arsonval movement. This instrument can respond to both alternating
and direct current[2] and also indicates true RMS for AC.
See Wattmeter for an alternative use for this instrument.

poles make the deection of the meter linearly proportional to current. These meters have linear scales. Basic
meter movements can have full-scale deection for cur- 2.4 Moving-iron
rents from about 25 microamperes to 10 milliamperes.[2]
Moving iron ammeters use a piece of iron which moves
Because the magnetic eld is polarised, the meter needle when acted upon by the electromagnetic force of a xed
acts in opposite directions for each direction of current. coil of wire. The moving-iron meter was invented by
A DC ammeter is thus sensitive to which way round it Austrian engineer Friedrich Drexler in 1884.[3] This type
is connected; most are marked with a positive terminal, of meter responds to both direct and alternating currents
but some have centre-zero mechanisms[note 1] and can dis- (as opposed to the moving-coil ammeter, which works
play currents in either direction. A moving coil meter in- on direct current only). The iron element consists of a
dicates the average (mean) of a varying current through moving vane attached to a pointer, and a xed vane, surit,[note 2] which is zero for AC. For this reason moving-coil rounded by a coil. As alternating or direct current ows
meters are only usable directly for DC, not AC.
through the coil and induces a magnetic eld in both
This type of meter movement is extremely common for vanes, the vanes repel each other and the moving vane

3
deects against the restoring force provided by ne helical springs.[2] The deection of a moving iron meter is
proportional to the square of the current. Consequently,
such meters would normally have a non linear scale, but
the iron parts are usually modied in shape to make the
scale fairly linear over most of its range. Moving iron instruments indicate the RMS value of any AC waveform
applied. Moving iron ammeters are commonly used to
measure current in industrial frequency AC circuits.

over time, giving as a result the product of current and

time; which is proportional to the electrical charge transferred with that current. These can be used for metering
energy (the charge needs to be multiplied by the voltage
to give energy) or for estimating the charge of a battery
or capacitor.

3 Picoammeter

A picoammeter, or pico ammeter, measures very low

electric current, usually from the picoampere range at the
In a hot-wire ammeter, a current passes through a wire lower end to the milliampere range at the upper end. Piwhich expands as it heats. Although these instruments coammeters are used for sensitive measurements where
have slow response time and low accuracy, they were the current being measured is below the theoretical limsometimes used in measuring radio-frequency current.[2] its of sensitivity of other devices, such as Multimeters.
These also measure true RMS for an applied AC current. Most picoammeters use a virtual short technique and
have several dierent measurement ranges that must be
switched between to cover multiple decades of measure2.6 Digital
ment. Other modern picoammeters use log compression
and a current sink method that eliminates range switchIn much the same way as the analogue ammeter formed ing and associated voltage spikes.[6] Special design and
the basis for a wide variety of derived meters, including usage considerations must be observed in order to reduce
voltmeters, the basic mechanism for a digital meter is a leakage current which may swamp measurements such as
digital voltmeter mechanism, and other types of meter are special insulators and driven shields, triaxial cable is often
built around this.
used for probe connections.

2.5

Hot-wire

Digital ammeter designs use a shunt resistor to produce

a calibrated voltage proportional to the current owing.
This voltage is then measured by a digital voltmeter,
through use of an analog to digital converter (ADC); the
digital display is calibrated to display the current through
the shunt. Such instruments are often calibrated to indicate the RMS value for a sine wave only, but many
designs will indicate true RMS within limitations of the
wave crest factor.

2.7

Integrating

An integrating current meter calibrated in Ampere-hours or

charge

4 Application
The majority of ammeters are either connected in series
with the circuit carrying the current to be measured (for
small fractional amperes), or have their shunt resistors
connected similarly in series. In either case, the current
passes through the meter or (mostly) through its shunt.
Ammeters must not be connected directly across a voltage source since their internal resistance is very low and
excess current would ow. Ammeters are designed for
a low voltage drop across their terminals, much less than
one volt; the extra circuit losses produced by the ammeter
are called its burden on the measured circuit.
Ordinary Weston-type meter movements can measure
only milliamperes at most, because the springs and practical coils can carry only limited currents. To measure larger currents, a resistor called a shunt is placed in
parallel with the meter. The resistances of shunts is in
the integer to fractional milliohm range. Nearly all of the
current ows through the shunt, and only a small fraction
ows through the meter. This allows the meter to measure
large currents. Traditionally, the meter used with a shunt
has a full-scale deection (FSD) of 50 mV, so shunts are
typically designed to produce a voltage drop of 50 mV
when carrying their full rated current.

To make a multi-range ammeter, a selector switch can be

There is also a range of devices referred to as integrating used to connect one of a number of shunts across the meammeters.[4][5] In these ammeters the current is summed ter. It must be a make-before-break switch to avoid dam-

REFERENCES

ing Hall eect magnetic eld sensors. A portable handheld clamp-on ammeter is a common tool for maintenance of industrial and commercial electrical equipment,
which is temporarily clipped over a wire to measure current. Some recent types have a parallel pair of magnetically soft probes that are placed on either side of the conductor.

5 See also
Clamp meter
Class of accuracy in electrical measurements
Electric circuit
Ayrton shunt switching principle

Electrical measurements
Electronics

aging current surges through the meter movement when

switching ranges.

List of electronics topics

A better arrangement is the Ayrton shunt or universal

shunt, invented by William E. Ayrton, which does not
require a make-before-break switch. It also avoids any
inaccuracy because of contact resistance. In the gure,
assuming for example, a movement with a full-scale voltage of 50 mV and desired current ranges of 10 mA, 100
mA, and 1 A, the resistance values would be: R1=4.5
ohms, R2=0.45 ohm, R3=0.05 ohm. And if the movement resistance is 1000 ohms, for example, R1 must be
adjusted to 4.525 ohms.

Multimeter

Switched shunts are rarely used for currents above 10 amperes.

Zero-center ammeters are used for applications requiring
current to be measured with both polarities, common in
scientic and industrial equipment. Zero-center ammeters are also commonly placed in series with a battery. In
this application, the charging of the battery deects the
needle to one side of the scale (commonly, the right side)
and the discharging of the battery deects the needle to
the other side. A special type of zero-center ammeter for
testing high currents in cars and trucks has a pivoted bar
magnet that moves the pointer, and a xed bar magnet to
keep the pointer centered with no current. The magnetic
eld around the wire carrying current to be measured deects the moving magnet.
Since the ammeter shunt has a very low resistance, mistakenly wiring the ammeter in parallel with a voltage
source will cause a short circuit, at best blowing a fuse,
possibly damaging the instrument and wiring, and exposing an observer to injury.
In AC circuits, a current transformer converts the magnetic eld around a conductor into a small AC current,
typically either 1 A or 5 A at full rated current, that can
be easily read by a meter. In a similar way, accurate
AC/DC non-contact ammeters have been constructed us-

Measurement category
Ohmmeter
Rheoscope
Voltmeter

6 Notes
[1] The needles resting position is in the centre of the scale
and the restoring spring can act equally well in either direction.
[2] provided that its frequency is faster than the meter can
respond to

7 References
[1] L. A. Geddes, Looking back: how measuring electric
current has improved through the ages, IEEE Potentials,
Feb/Mar 1996, pages 40-42
[2] Frank Spitzer and Barry Howarth, Principles of Modern
Instrumentation, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York,
1972, ISBN 0-03-080208-3 chapter 11
[3] Fragebogen aus der Personenmappe Friedrich Drexler
(1858 - 1945)". Technisches Museum Wien. Retrieved
2013-07-10.
[4] http://www-project.slac.stanford.edu/lc/local/notes/dr/
Wiggler/Wigrad_BK.pdf
[5] http://dit.upc.es/lpdntt/biblio/BREUS/LEE97a.pdf
[6] Ix Innovations, LLC. PocketPico Ammeter Theory of
Operation (PDF). Retrieved 2014-07-11.

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Ammeter Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammeter?oldid=727484798 Contributors: AxelBoldt, Bryan Derksen, Rjstott, Heron,

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