bigcountry

Anytime, Its just sitting there. You only use it once a year, kinda like that stoney point.

rob1

Mossy,
They told you that you have " Dirty " electric? Har, har, he, he, har!!! Sorry to say, but there is no such thing! You either have electric or you don't! If there is 110 volts there, then it will work. " Dirty Electric", what will they come up with next?? Har, he, he har.

bigcountry

Absolutely there is. I used to be a electrical engineer long time ago and electrical noice problems in the home is nothing new. It comes from all kinds of problems. You can trace it down to one appliance even. Take a occilliscope and put it on freerun and take a look at the noise yourself.

It gets worse as you go out to real sandy areas, where a good ground to sink the noise is hard to find. Noise on the line is the reason we had to put a sprinkler or water trickler out in Regenerator's for fiber optic systems with the grounding rod when I worked for LCI and MCI out in Reno, NV.

These scales consist of transducers that work in mA and uA electric currents. Especially something as small as a grain. Opening the window, drafts, dryer running with the same circuit as the scale all have an effect. Something as noisy power line has no effect on your radios or TV or computer that could care less about .1V changes, but some items do. They can isolate this, and I am not sure why they don't with some high Freq filtering, or capacitance circitry. I guess cost too much.

rick_reno

I've seen some discussion here about digital scales not being any good. I'd say that my Pact digital scale is the single best piece of reloading gear I've bought in the last 10 years - I've been reloading for over 25 years. I did have some trouble with the battery powered one not working right - sent it back and got the one that runs off wall power and it's excellent. I trickle powder into it everytime I use it and it works great - it's much faster and I'm sure more accurate than either my balance scales (RCBS and Lyman). I've read about the Dillon scale not working with tricklers - the Pact scale does.

bigcountry

Your the only one I know that could beat a beam. You must got a good one. I have tested the pact myself also and still have it. Sent back to cabelas along with the RCBS twin and dillion and Cabelas brand.

I guess I am confused how it could be faster than a beam or more accurate?? Maybe you can educate me. Your only fast as your trickle no matter which. And a beam moves real time. That means, no or little lag with the speed of a human eyeball. I know the pacts do not update more than once a 500milliseconds, not real time and a lag. How again.

Also how are they more accurate than a beam?? A beam is either accurate or its not. You constantly have to recalibrate a digital. They recommend it anyway. I used to do work on transducers, and would like for you to educate me how they are so accurate.

rob1

Big Country,
I am sorry, I have been a Journeyman Electrician for over 20 years 10 of which were Residential, and have Never heard of " Dirty " electric! If what you are stating would be the case, then ALL household electric would be " dirty " because it ALL comes from the same panel! Every circuit in that panel is going to pick up fluctuations in voltage, amperage and resistance every time an appliance starts up, whether it's on the same circuit or not, because it is fed from the same buss!I currently am working in a Polymers factory where they use digital scales all over their laboratory, and have to make VERY precise weight measurements, and have large extrusion machines running 24-7., and we have never had a problem with " dirty electric" effecting any measurements!

bigcountry

Rob1, a jouneyman electrician never would know about it. A typcial one wouldn't. My lab tech has creditials like you, and was shocked on how much he didn't realize about electronics when he came to work here. We both taught each other alot. He showed me proper grounding techniques, and home wiring expertise, we showed him about ground loops, and very specialty electronic gear working in the RF world. So he was a smart feller that could live in both worlds of high frequency analysis and home wiring which is rare. They rarely use occilliscope's or spectrum analyzers, in fact only time he looked at a specturm was in tech school. Typical home appliances have enormous dynamic range for voltage fluctuations. Almost all your home sterios, and TV's are immune for high frenquecy spikes due to almost all the power is converted to DC thru a typical 4-way bridge, and capacitance inline for filtering out such. Of course washers dryers, ovens, and lights are even more immune to the issues, as washers work on AC motors and could care less about a 10V 2KHz spike, ovens just heat an element. The human eye can't pick up a 2KHz-10KHz change in light, and even if it could the capacitance in a light would filter it out.

A peizo electric devices and tranducers unfortunatly works on a different set of rules in the uV range. uV is .001volts. Compare that to 110v AC. Yes, at my company, we use the digitals also. We have our own power, and are immune to the outside world. Totol different set of rules for proper commercial power. Since you are a journey man you know all about different standards for grounding for a commercial 10 story goverment building and mossy oaks split foyer in a developement so you actually could easily school me in stardards. I know I sure as crap don't know everything, but these devices, I do have a grasp on. hey, if you don't believe me or think I am full of it, just ignore me.

Rootsy

All signals to some extent or another have noise in them. This is why instrumentation utilizes filters in order to block unwanted frequencies and such. Noise can interfere with sensative instrumentation that is working on a small scale voltage, etc. Utilizing an instrument like a multimeter will not show this situation.. you truly do need a signal analyzer which can capture and magnify the signal. You can then see if there is a fluctuation in the frequency as well as eronious noise in the main signal... think of a nice smooth oscillating line like you'd draw with a pencil... then redraw that line but instead of being smooth make the line very shaky and jagged as you retrace the original line. that'd be one example of noise...

i own a 5-0-5 and an RCBS digital. i use the digital more than the ole beam though... i find if i get close and trickle some in and give the pan a little nudge it'll upset the scale and instead of taking forever to update it'll pop to the actual measurement. I also tend to calibrate just to make sure it's thinking straight before i sit down to do any loading... if i am weighing every charge i'll often check to make sure the scale is staying zero'd. my RCBS tends to be a little finicky now and again... but for some reason i dont care to fiddle with the beam... the one thing that really bothers me when iam being ANAL is the 0.05 gr resolution of the digital... if you are .48 it is going to say .4 if you are .52 it's going to say .5... kinda silly to worry about now that i think of it... but with the beam you still have to eyeball it and wait for the oscillations to settle and hope there isn't any significant friction to stop the beam from moving when it is just creeping home...

the greatest asset to my reloading venture has been an RCBS hand primer... a good cheap progressive loading press like the Lee turret is nice to just throw together plinking loads for the revolver too...

Jamie

bigcountry

Thats why a quality lab scale or counting scale can cost upwards of a 1000 dollars. Excellent filters built in and tracking ciruitry like a extech scale or ohaus. Usually only in grams. Which it takes 15.43gr per 1 gram.

You pay 120 dollars for a pact or RCBS, you get what you pay for.

rob1

Exactly!
The problem is not in the household electric, it's in the scale! The filtering for the fluctuations would have to be contained in the appliance being used ( in this case- the scale ), because there is no way to prevent fluctuations in your household electricity. The scale should work fine in your home on any dedicated circuit for that purpose. Apparantly, this one wouldn't work right in anyone's home!