Electric personality and electronic scale......

[alinwa]

So hear me out guys..... As Paul Harvey would say, here's a strange.

I use a Denver MMX-123 scale for reloading, can't live without it. I keep it on 24-7 in a small room with no windows nor nuttin. Temp fluctuates a little but generally 60-75 degrees.

DAY after day after day I use this thing, for weeks/months at a time and when I walk into the room it's reading '0'...... as long as my routine is unchanged it just stays zeroed, gener'ly.

But now.... let TWO or more people into the room and it takes off! Two people are most often talking, (at least if one of them is me ) and moving around some, but not THAT much.... and the scale creeps off zero, just goes somewhere else.....

And it has to be re-zeroed.

why?

(I'm half believing it's air pressure.......... Somebody straighten me out!!)

puh-LEEZE!

al

 

[Lynn]

Alinwa
Back in my hi-tech days we had a Yig Oscillator with a 1.1 ghz spur we couldn't rid of.We must have spent atleast a million engineering dollars trying to solve the problem only to have the tester unplug there boom box from the 110 plug and solve the problem for us.A company meeting was called immediately and from that date on anything entering the building that was for enjoyment purposes was battery powered with no battery chargers allowed.
If you haven't turned on any extra electrical appliances like lights fans radios you might want to look at the mechanical possibilities.If your freind is extra thick around the waste line and walks by the scale does he cause the floor or work area to shake?
Waterboy

 

[Roy Allain]

That's shocking.

 

[Boyd Allen]

What about a chassis ground?

 

[alinwa]

Unit is grounded.

The floor can't shake if'n there's an oliphant in the room.

Most generally the person(s) in the room remain disconnected from the power supply.

al

 

[Rustystud]

Sensitive electronics

Temperature changes, magnetic fields, air currents, varriance in voltages, humidity, viberations, RF energy, sound waves, all have effects.

Magnetic telephone ringers, and fluoresent light balast, speakers all are problems for sensitive scales.

Nat Lambeth

 

[brian roberts]

And something to remember, that humans.....................

are carbon-based, electrochemical beings.........

 

[Tony Shankle]

Al,

I have that scale and see the same creeping from time to time without the extra person. I bought a fairly nice battery backup power supply that is suppose to put out clean power (plus I can keep weighing when the electricity goes out) but I still see the creep. Long ago I had the same problem with RF coming in the power cord and a guy gave me this magnet square to wrap the cord around. It solved the problem on the old scale but not the new one when I tried.

So, I wrote it off to being a ghost and just kept trucking. If you find the answer I would love to know!

Tony

 

[jeff51]

Al,
Is the AC running? In my shop, when the air blower is on, and someone is standing a little bit behind my chair, I get air movement on my bench. At least I think I do. With just me sitting down, the air flow misses the bench.
Jeff

Or, could one of your buddies be a source of hot air?

 

[TomD]

There's a short and easy answer to your problem.

yes

 

[bill larson]

I`ve owned MX123`s for 3 years.... I`m on my second unit..... I have spent at least 2 hours total at different times talking to the Denver Instruments tech... I`ve built a seperate stand for scale.... out of steel... completely independent .... I installed a commercial quality line isolator/voltage conditioner....I leave mine on a couple of days/weeks when I TRY to use it.... starting early a.m... no one
else in house...up... no furnace... no flouresants.... no radio.....I still have problems with it floating around.... I most often rely/use a tuned balance beam Ohaus....
OMHO... mileage may vary...???
Bill Larson

 

[twentytwoguy]

There is a rythm you need to get into where you throw the charge and trickle up and then your done. The tech at Acculab said it's not meant to hold a measurement and that you should take a reading and not dawdle around too much since it will wander.
It's a fine line and not a perfect science and you have to get a feel for the timing but it's way more accurate than my 10-10 RCBS balance by a mile.

 

[Dale Lewis]

Have you tried wearing tin hats. My wife says they help.

 

[John Kielly]

This could be dual purpose: http://www.stopabductions.com/

 

[MarkR]

In a lot of homes, the breaker box is wired using a common return. relocate each circuits return wire as necessary and this will remove many voltage drop problems.
Mark

 

[Larry Elliott]

This could be dual purpose: http://www.stopabductions.com/

John,
I've stopped worrying about that sort of thing ever since I quit thinking! It also stopped those annoying headaches as well. It's worked too, since in 69 years I've never been abducted by any aliens. My ex-wife was Canadian, but I don't think that counts.

Back to the OP, Al, back when I worked (analytical chemistry) some genius decided that we had to unload our old fashioned Mettler electro-mechanical balances and buy some zippy whippy Sartorius electronic balances. This was in the 90's and the Sartorious balances were well over $2k each. Very pretty, but touchy as anything, they wandered, were unstable, and generally a pain in the tail. They were VERY sensitive, supposedly accurate to 0.1 mg, but anyone who trusted that last tenth of a milligram was the supreme optimist.

Less expensive electronic balances have the same sorts of problems. Electronic balances should be left on all the times or allowed to fully warm up (20-30 min) before use in my experience, but even then they can and will wander and lose zero. Some are better than others some worse.

 

[alinwa]

There is a rythm you need to get into where you throw the charge and trickle up and then your done. The tech at Acculab said it's not meant to hold a measurement and that you should take a reading and not dawdle around too much since it will wander.
It's a fine line and not a perfect science and you have to get a feel for the timing but it's way more accurate than my 10-10 RCBS balance by a mile.

Hey! This does seem to fit my symptoms

And YES it's accurate and very repeatable as long as I keep an eagle eye on it. The single biggest factor that's helped me out has been buying 4 identical scale pans and trimming/weighting them to be the same. WHEN I KEEP THE RHYTHM it's a smoooth ride. It's when I walk up and show it off or try demonstrate how I use it that I get weird readings......

I set aside a pan of powder as a check weight and every 50rd box or so I hark back to my checkweight.

Single digit ES numbers are now a reality in my shooting world.

This is worth a lot of headache,

to me

al

 

[alinwa]

In a lot of homes, the breaker box is wired using a common return. relocate each circuits return wire as necessary and this will remove many voltage drop problems.
Mark

Mark, could you explain this?

My panels are wired with neutral/ground busses running down each outside and all the white and copper wires are hooked to these. The two busses are directly connected to the UFER rod in the foundation (which I poured)

I can't see how any ground is separated from any other, they all connect to the same place.

Now in my case every circuit in every building is wired to 'home run' clear back to the panel...... are you saying that in some homes separated circuits share a ground or neutral WIRE in the wall? So you're saying that in some areas guys will heat up both sides (B/W) of a 2-wire and use ground for a shared neutral or what?

thanks


al