Budget digital scale

Agro · 2018-10-16T11:57:36.000Z

I’d like to get some OK but cheap scale.
I read these:

have resolution of 0.01g and (depending on variant) max weight of up to 500g. I read that the actual accuracy is not far off that, however in order to perform this well they need to be calibrated from time to time.
So…in addition to $3 scale I need a calibration weight.
I see that to achieve 0.01g accuracy at 500g one needs F2 class weight. Such weight costs…nearly $60 locally.
OK, I don’t need 0.01g accuracy. M3 class (0.25g off at 500g) will do just fine. Such weight costs…nearly $60 locally.
I read that some borrow weights, but since calibration needs to be done periodically, I’m not happy to do that.

Maybe I should get a classless weight?
200g weights are cheaper than 500g ones, maybe I should get a 200g scale?

Suggestions?

Flashy_Mike · 2018-10-16T12:22:09.000Z

This?
There are also variants with higher and lower weight limit. I bought the linked one years ago and its still working well.

Enderman · 2018-10-16T14:09:10.000Z

This is the one I use, work very well.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Weigh-AWS-100-Digital-Resolution/dp/B0012LOQUQ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1539698698&sr=8-4&keywords=100g+scale
They also have similar versions for 250g, 600g, 1kg.

duvallite · 2018-10-16T23:28:58.000Z

Check out the WAOAW TL-Series scale on Amazon. There are a couple of review vids on YouTube done by people who reload ammo. They seem impressed with it, especially for the cheap cost of around $20 or so.

Calaveras · 2018-10-16T23:55:38.000Z

Agro,
I work at a local Weights and Measures department and have access to those F2 class weights and they are expensive.
You do not need that. I have a small scale that I use at home to weigh raptors and purchased a cheap $15 (500g) test weight from Amazon. they are accurate to about .05 grams.
Unless you are compounding pharmaceuticals like an apothecary /pharmacy that is good enough. You do not need it accurate to .01
The scale shown is not accurate enough to hold that accuracy even if you calibrate it daily. Resolution is not correlated to accuracy. You can buy a new Fiat 500 car that the speedometer states goes up to 160 KPH, but you would not expect the car to move that fast.
In the same way a scale that has a resolution of .01 gram would not weigh accurately at that weight. Your breath or someone walking on the floor in the next room would cause it to fluctuate by more that .05 grams unless you put a glass box over the scale and have it isolated from vibrations.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B8M9M37/ref=biss_dp_t_asn

adnj · 2018-10-17T00:13:54.000Z

Get three or four pieces of brass or stainless steel and take them somewhere else to weigh them. Mark the weight. It worked wwonders for chemistry lab.

Agro · 2018-10-17T18:40:41.000Z

Thanks for the answers!

Flashy Mike:

This?
There are also variants with higher and lower weight limit. I bought the linked one years ago and its still working well.

Good, much better than what I have found. Though shipping is €20. There’s free shipping for orders over €29. 500g scale + M2 weight is €28….I spend some time looking for similar options on Amazon, found nothing from other sellers…but I don’t have a feeling that I checked everything as well as I could…

duvallite:

Check out the WAOAW TL-Series scale on Amazon. There are a couple of review vids on YouTube done by people who reload ammo. They seem impressed with it, especially for the cheap cost of around $20 or so.

Well, over €40 in EU…

Enderman:

This is the one I use, work very well.
Amazon.com
They also have similar versions for 250g, 600g, 1kg.

Similarly to the above, €30 for a 100g scale.

Calaveras:

Agro,
I work at a local Weights and Measures department and have access to those F2 class weights and they are expensive.
You do not need that. I have a small scale that I use at home to weigh raptors and purchased a cheap $15 (500g) test weight from Amazon. they are accurate to about .05 grams.
Unless you are compounding pharmaceuticals like an apothecary /pharmacy that is good enough. You do not need it accurate to .01
The scale shown is not accurate enough to hold that accuracy even if you calibrate it daily. Resolution is not correlated to accuracy. You can buy a new Fiat 500 car that the speedometer states goes up to 160 KPH, but you would not expect the car to move that fast.
In the same way a scale that has a resolution of .01 gram would not weigh accurately at that weight. Your breath or someone walking on the floor in the next room would cause it to fluctuate by more that .05 grams unless you put a glass box over the scale and have it isolated from vibrations.

Amazon.com

Thanks, good to know.
Yeah, I actually don’t need this precision. 0.1% off is already very good. But if I can easily get better than that - I’d like to do it.

adnj:

Get three or four pieces of brass or stainless steel and take them somewhere else to weigh them. Mark the weight. It worked wwonders for chemistry lab.

That’s a very interesting idea. I actually read the instructions for the scale in the first post and it needs a calibration weight of exactly 500g, so a random piece of metal won’t work. But I can buy the cheapest 500g weight I can find, weigh it and use for calibration. Then scale all the results accordingly.
Or find a scale that can be calibrated with any weight, that would be much more convenient.

Lightbringer · 2018-10-17T18:43:15.000Z

Agro:

That’s a very interesting idea. I actually read the instructions for the scale in the first post and it needs a calibration weight of exactly 500g, so a random piece of metal won’t work. But I can buy the cheapest 500g weight I can find, weigh it and use for calibration.

Or get a slug of metal that won’t oxidise too much, trim it to maybe 502g, then on a calibrated scale, keep filing off little bits ’til it’s 500.00000000g as exactly as you can get it.

djozz · 2018-10-17T20:37:34.000Z

There must be some local polish secondhand website? You can find yourself an oldschool brass calibration weight. Would that not be accurate enough?

Agro · 2018-10-23T03:53:59.000Z

The take-too-big-and-trim strategy is not comfortable for me to use. I know a person working at a pharmacy and I can ask him to weigh something for me, but there’s no way I’ll be able to borrow a scale to run the iterative process. So I sought a scale that would allow me to calibrate with arbitrary weight. After reading instructions for about 20 cheap scales I found one that has this feature:

It’s called DP-01 and costs under $11 shipped. I failed to find any opinions about it though, I guess I’ll have to test my luck.

Agro · 2018-10-23T03:58:20.000Z

djozz:

There must be some local polish secondhand website? You can find yourself an oldschool brass calibration weight. Would that not be accurate enough?

Really there’s no such site. There used to be one, but they shifted their business model. There are some others. Anyway - I checked that before starting the thread and came up with nothing.

siata94 · 2018-10-23T23:58:09.000Z

I have used several cheap scales from amazon and most went dark after a year or so.
The AWS still going strong after about 5 years. I use it to measure espresso (both the coffee
grind and then the liquid output) and it seems very consistent to .1g. Good enough for my purpose.

BlueSwordM · 2018-10-24T01:31:06.000Z

Personally, to “calibrate” the scale I got a few months back, I took one of the very accurately weighed 100g at my university that they used for calibration.

It accurately measure the weight to 100,1g, which is an accuracy of +/- 1%.

Tom_Tom · 2018-10-24T01:47:21.000Z

I have two of these type of scales, to cover different ranges.

They are surprisingly consistent, given how they work.

I have two test-weights, which are simply SS nuts, weighed on something far far better.

I don’t “calibrate” the scales, just measure the test weight, enter the correction factor into my calculator, and determine the setting.

Though TBH just scooping powder consistently with the yellow Lee things works just as well.