bigcountry

Goodness graceous rob1, you will only pay 80 dollars for a scale, what do you expect?

I agree however, 10 dollars of extra filtering and capactance is all it would take I believe. I just don't get it sometimes. Maybe cause I don't care about Bill of material cost where I work, but a little extra effort in designing something can go a long way. I doubt however that the cost margins are that great on those little scales. So to be competitive, I would say they save every resistor they can.

Slamfire

After 30 some odd years of workn' for a large electric utility I am hear to tell you there is such a thing as "dirty" electricity. Just let one little connection somewhere between the generator and you get loose, or have a weld with some splatter and there you have it. The tv and radio people call it static. Sometimes you can see it, that's called corona.

rob1

I guess I have never heard the term " Dirty " electric. Where I am from, we call that a bad connection and fix it! My point is: In a home you ALWAYS have fluctuations in electric ( I.E. Dryer being turned on ), It uses BOTH busses if it is an electric dryer, therfore it will cause a fluctuation in ALL the circuits on both sides of the panel. You can't call that " dirty " electric. That's NORMAL operation! If someone had a problem ( as you have stated- loose connection, etc. ) in their household electric, then I agree with the scale manufacturer 100%. If not, then the scale is at fault and the manufacturer should fix it. We shoudn't have to take the scale apart when we get it and start adding resistors etc. to make it operate correctly on normal household current, it should be that way when we get it.

bigcountry

Ok, rob, I took what you origianlly said the wrong. I guess we were agreeing to agree. Sorry about that. Anyway, you know its not always in your house believe that or not. If joe smoe neighbor's grounding sucks, or inproper, and he has RF devices, that are real noisy, it can contamiate your power also. I have seen this in pipe grounds in apartment buildings.

I can't say I have heard of dirty power, but knew what he meant.

I know I am beating a dead horse. I just miss my electonics days. Seems I manage more than design these days.

kelbro

RCBS' response sounds like BS to me. I haven't seen one but I'm guessing that the RCBS transformer that you plug into the wall is most likely an AC to DC converter. That should filter out any line noise and you are not putting the 'house' AC into the scale.

Simple way to check it out if you already have a UPS for your PC. Plug your scale into the UPS outlet. Isolation transformers in the UPS clean up the power and filter the noise and spikes out. There are some out there that actually take the sign wave in, filter it, convert it to a DC output, and then convert it back to a close facsimile of a sine wave to run their sensitive electronics.

Sounds like RCBS just needs to spend $1.25 on their transformer rather than the $1.10 that they're currently spending.

You could possibly find a 'cleaner' transformer to power the scale.