Thermocouple Measurement

[B-Rad]

I have a PXI 1031 Chassis that has a type 4060 DMM installed. I was
looking thru the LabVIEW VIs and found a couple that convert
measurements to temperature from thermocouple voltages. My question is
this: Do I need another card or other hardware to record temperature
measurements from a bare thermocouple, or can I do it with the DMM.
>From my understanding, all thermocouples are just dissimilar metals
that produce a small potential when heat is applied. Assuming I can get
the accuracy of voltage measurement (and low noise), are there examples
of DMM thermocouple readers in LabVIEW?

[gwd]

You CAN directly connect the thermocouple to the DMM BUT

- you will have an implicit reference junction at room temperature, whatever that is

- you potentially can have errors if the temperatures of the two DMM terminals become different.

To read about reference junctions and get calibration tables see www.omega.com.

[Brian F.]

Hello B-Rad.  You can build a really cool thermocouple measurement system by adding in a high power switch.  Please refer to http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/3778#2 for more information.  This article has a ton of information about measuring thermocouples with a switch and DMM. 

Brian