PACT Digital Precision Powder Scale

[Troutburger]

Anybody using one of these scales?

I bought one last year from Midway, but only recently started using it. The scale seemed to work fine for the first 200 rounds or so. But now it constantly reads Tarre "error." When I can get it to zero it will weigh the same load up to 3 grains plus or minus every time.

I have it on its own solid bench at least 6 ft away from florescent lighting plugged into its own outlet in a room with no ac vents. This thing is shakier than Michael J Fox on caffeine pills.

I've had it longer than 90 days so I cant return it to Midway and Pact charges like $65 to overhaul it.

[Westwindmike]

Will it run on batteries only. I'd try that. If not, try another outlet in another part of the house. Use a check weight if you have one. If not use a factory bullet of known weight. It may just need a re-boot.

Good luck with it.

[Dolomite_supafly]

I have been told cell phones can negatively impact these. As well as all kinds of other electronic devices. PC's as well as their monitors can cause issues because of the elecromagnetic field they have. But there may be hope if all that fails. People who use them say to leave them on all the time and never turn them off. Some also say that you cannot use them for at least 24 hours after turing it on.

This is just to finiky for me. I don't use a balance beam but I do use an electronic scale just not this one. When my Lee Perfect Powder measure doesn't throw a perfect charge then I grab the powder between my fore finger and thumb and bring it up to weight.

I would say turn it off for a couple of hours then leave it on for the next couple of days and try it again.

Dolomite

[mikegideon]

I have 3 scales (2 RCBS and a Frankford Arsenal) and they're all good. The Frankford arsenal is the real surprise. Cheap. Always dead on with the check weight.

[Troutburger]

Left it plugged in and on all night last night. Reset factory calibration with the check weights. Finally got it to rezero.

Based on this scale my shadow weighs anywhere between -.7 and .8 grains. Now my soul is pretty well worn so I dont doubt the negative. I am pretty fat, so maybe my shadow does weigh .8 grains.

It will now weigh the same charge with in + or - appx .3 grains now, but it does not like to hold zero. There is no a/c in the room, so I cant figure out the fluctuations. Maybe it is the outlet?

[Guest Lester Weevils]

MidwayUSA user reviews seem generally reliable as far as I can tell. The reviews on that Pact seem about evenly split between very high and very low ratings. Perhaps one might conclude that Pact scale is real nice when it works, but unfortunately a lot of the units don't stay reliable over the long term?

I probably wouldn't be inclined to send it in for repair unless it would be a free warranty repair. I'd cut my losses. Not sayin that is the best thing to do, just how I'd respond to the situation.

Have bought 5 electronic scales for various purposes. One was a dud and I should have sent it back immediately but never got around to it and didn't cost enough to spend a bunch of time with RMA's and such. Guess that was cutting my losses. Cheaper to toss it in the trash than fool with it.

Three of em have been "real happy with" so far. Maybe one will go up in smoke tomorrow, but so far they work surprisingly good for the money.

The 10+ year old Lyman powder scale I've been "conditionally happy with" but it has required some babying and fiddling over the years, but hey that's a pretty long time for a cheap electronic device to keep working at all. My scale was the "cheapest" Lyman scale of that time, and they were selling another more expensive model.

As best can tell, the old Lyman weight platform and strain gage have a little bit of "stickiness" what is sometimes called hysteresis. Where the mechanism can't smoothly track very small changes and the random error is the platform/gage "sticking" to randomly different positions "in the ballpark" of the true weight. Sometimes when it has decided to misbehave I've got it working better GENTLY blowing out whatever dust might be under the platform. Then GENTLY exercising the platform for a few repetitions. That scale seems to have little "over-excursion feet" under the platform to protect the strain gage. The feet limit how far down the platform can go. But on the other hand its max weight is 20 grams so don't want to destroy the strain gage trying to loosen it up.

Several times it has got in a confused error state that refused to calibrate out. There is a factory reset obscure key combo that can help, but a couple of times even the factory reset didn't help and what helped was to take out the batteries and let it sit a couple of days in case there is any CMOS memory in there that takes awhile to bleed down. Then put back in batteries, factory reset, calibrate, and it would work as good as ever and make not too shabby measurements though it has a bit of drift and have to keep an eye out not to get bad readings.

All the above is equivalently scientific to thumping a bad TV to make it work, only reporting it as maybe something that MIGHT get yer scale working again.

[StPatrick]

I doubt that this will solve the OP's issue, but having worked in laboratories for many years, I can share some knowledge:

1. For best results, keep the balance plugged in and turned on for at least 1 hour prior to use - changes in internal temperature, and especially changing internal temperature while measuring, will introduce drift errors.

2. Exercise the load cell when using a balance that hasn't been in use for more than 30 minutes. This can be done by applying and removing a check weight (wait for the numbers to stabilize after each addition / removal of the weight) 10-15 times.

3. Make sure your balance is absolutely level. Even a slight variance from a perfect level introduces error into your measurement, and the error varies based on where the load is placed on the pan.

4. Know the error inherent in your balance - with a little bit of work, you can identify how precise your balance is, and also have a built-in warning to let you know when things are outside normal operating range*. The first part will allow you to figure out what's in your loaded cases, e.g. 5.0 grains +/- 0.3 grains 99% of the time. The second portion will tell you when some part of your system has gone beyond normal variation and has a special cause. This is easily accomplished via spreadsheet. If folks are interested, let me know and I can throw a sheet and some instructions for use together.

*Your 10g check weight will not always be 10.000g. It's important to know where the break between natural process variation / inherent error and "something is wrong" occurs.