danski0224
Well-known member
It's been available for a while. At least 15 years.
Old school residential HVAC tools
- Thread starter Firebrick43
- Start date
The only digital gauges I knew about were the Testo's with the manifold and hoses.
danski0224
Well-known member
Digi-Cool were the first ones available in quantity, early 2000's. There were a couple of iterations, then the "AK" series were much cheaper. There was a really cool manifold under development, which never happened.
It was all done by Jim Bergmann and his wife. The Digi Cool website is still there with some of the history.
IIRC, he was also involved in the iManifold, but that was bought out a long time ago, and the future of it was unknown. That product was/is liked by refrigeration techs.
There's an app called Measure Quick that can give you real time performance data, which used to be done with a well into 5 figure setup from Honeywell. Jim Bergmann is key in this. I believe he might also be involved with True Tech Tools.
A lot of really useful stuff in Measure Quick is available free.
joel63
Well-known member
I have one also. Great pump.
Don't do apps - not old school enough for me.
Some more oldie stuff:
Charging cylinders
Somebody mentioned charging cylinders earlier. I use one in school, never owned one. I did use a "meat hook" scale to weigh freon for adding to systems, but went to a "new" item fairly quick: the TIF electronic weight scale
Always took great care with it, kept watch on the batteries to swap them out if they started corroding. After some years, it quit working. Called TIF and did the RBR plan (Repair by replacement). Sent the old unit in with $100 - they sent out a new one. Still have it. C used charging cylinder came up for sale some years ago, and I wanted to grab it. But I found out it was an R-12 cylinder, so I passed. A R-22 cylinder I might have used, as I still do window unit work when I find it.
Sling psychrometer
Another device from school days that I never bought. Borderline almost bought one, then tussled with the idea of an electronic humidity meter. Never pulled the trigger. I ended up just using the charging charts on the units, and for older units, I assembled a 3-ring binder for photo-copied charts from inside units when I found them.
The local Alpha Graphics shop used to laugh when I brought in door panels to have them make a readable copy of the chart from the inside. At first at least - soon they started assisting me warmly as I was giving them alot of business! Did that with manufacturers data packages as well. I had wiring schematics, LED codes, charging charts, and installation instructions on a ton of units - probably had six 3-ring binders labeled by brand. My truck was a library on wheels, and many techs asked me for copies of stuff they were working on.
Nice to see they're still making the manual/analog psychrometers
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