scale drifting

[memilanuk]

Hello,

I thought someone else had some problems w/ their new scale,Acculab MX-123) drifting here not too long ago... anybody recall the thread? I'm not having much luck w/ the search for it yet.

At any rate what I've got is this: New Acculab scale from Sinclair Int'l, set on a granite surface plate and all leveled out on my bench, put 30gr worth of test weights from my RCBS Deluxe Test Weight set on there and left it yesterday afternoon at 30.04gr and put the lid down... when I left for work last night after a couple hours it read 29.74gr,and when I came back today it reads 29.02gr. It's set to either unstable or very unstable,think it's unstable) and is plugged into an old APC BackUPS 500 uninterruptible power supply,though not one of the fancy $$$ inverter types).

Any ideas what gives?

TIA,

Monte

 

[memilanuk]

Well, FWIW the scale was set for 'Auto Zero',factory default setting). It's kind of getting to be a PITA having the dang thing drift 0.04 to 0.10 on *every charge*, depending on how long it takes me to trickle it. By this I mean, before I throw a charge, I zero the scale w/ the pan on it. Then when I'm done trickling and have dumped the charge down the funnel into the case, I set the pan on the scale again... and it doesn't read 0.00, it reads -0.04 to -0.10gr. What am I doing wrong here?!?

TIA,

Monte

 

[JamesnTN]

Any time you have an instrument with the resolution that the scale you have or the MXX-123 I sell you need a line conditioner or UPS to plug the scale into. My 603 would drift bad until I purchased a UPS off of e-bay and plugged it into. Since then my scales will sit here on zero 90% of the time.

On my website I have detailed directions on how to setup the enviromental settings and a few other settings as well. Click Reloaders nest below my name and go to the Denver instruments link to the left. I have it setup so you can download the instructions in a PDF firmat as well.

 

[memilanuk]

James,

I'll take a look at that info on your site. As mentioned, it's already plugged into a UPS, but not one that conditions the incoming line as far as I know.

The weird/stupid part is this: I thought about what was said about it maybe needing to sit *at* zero more for the Auto Zero to work... so I took off the weight, the pan, etc. and zeroed it and left it overnight... came back this morning and it read exactly '0.00gr'.

Then I dumped a charge of Varget, and trickled it up to 29.50gr... and let it sit. Within probably one minute it was off 0.10gr, and w/i 5 minutes it was over 0.40gr off.

WTF?!?

Real handy scale... it'll read 'zero' all day long... just don't try actually weighing anything with it. Sheesh.

 

[EBaker]

Have you tried resetting the stability level. It took me a couple of times looking at he direction to understand how it is done ...but once I did it, it works much better. It comes from the factory set at stable..Like James said earlier, you want to set it to very unstable.

Ed

 

[memilanuk]

I've tried 'Stable','Unstable', & 'Very Unstable'. Right now it's on 'Unstable', as it seemed like trickling was almost unbearable on 'Very Unstable'... trickle in two kernels and watch the reading jump 0.10-0.20gr, then settle back down... then repeat. What a PITA. I hope that's not what it takes to run this thing, cuz I'll be weighing *only* my 1k rds, if that's the case. Lifes too short to spend 5 minutes tricking every charge.:,