Re: Question for the AccuLab Scale users
Adding the tips that I PM'd. I received them from a member that I purchased a milligram balance from. They're pasted below.
The biggest tips to relatively trouble-free operation are
1) make sure there are *no* drafts in the room. No open windows/doors, no fans, and no nearby vents pointed towards it. Yes, I know thats standard warning for normal scale use; but using a milligram scale without an enclosed draft shield (the glass ring helps, but not enough) will drive it home.
2) is get that thing on a solid, reinforced bench. No sticking it on a shelf, especially on one of those NRMA loading benches with the little flop-down powder scale shelves The environmental parameters should already be set to #4 i.e. 'Very Unstable' (as compared to a climate controlled laboratory) to help it shrug off some vibration and such, but every bit helps.
3) is get it on some 'clean' power, like a UPS that does voltage-regulation in addition to the normal surge-suppression and black/brown-out protection. A lot of people don't do this and have no problems (their utility AC must be cleaner than mine) but mine behaved markedly better after this step.
4) keep things like cell phones at least 10 ft away or it will start acting weird in subtle ways - the zero may keep drifting, etc. Wi-fi from a laptop or iPod touch doesn't seem to bother it, nor do cordless phones, but cell phones... yikes. Some people report issues if you have it too close to a fluorescent light - I had a big herkin' 8' four-bulb shop light overhead with *magnetic* ballasts and when those things would flicker... the scale would start mis-behaving. I got rid of the big magnetic ballast beast, and got some new electronic T-5 fixtures... again, made a small but noticeable difference.
5) Try not to use it in temperature extremes - if its uncomfortable for you, it's probably going to adversely affect the accuracy of the scale reading. Below 50F and above 85-90F and you probably need to think about finding a better spot.
6) Don't try to trickle into the pan on the scale. Get some powder in a small cup or extra scale pan, and a plastic spoon. If you can get a baby-food spoon that'd be great, or an actual chemical mixing spoon (metal) like a friend uses would be best. I use a plain old white Dixie picnic spoon. Very easy to 'see' how many kernels you are picking up with it. Take the pan off the scale, add or subtract as necessary, then put it back. If you are a wee bit off, like '46.76' when going for a target weight of '46.80', you can safely toss a couple kernels in there and wait a few moments... the scale will register them no problem. Most powder tricklers (especially the Vibrashine I got) shake and well, 'vibrate' too much and just drive the scale nuts - plus the slow gradual change from a trickler makes the scale think the zero is shifting and it starts trying to compensate - which starts screwing with your zero for real. Tricklers and the VIC-123 don't mix well.
If you can get a powder thrower set pretty close but a little low (so it's 'heavy' charges are right about at your target weight) you can get pretty good at eye-balling how much powder to add fairly quickly. Better is one of the electronic dispensers like the Chargemaster set 0.1gr light - basically less variation in how much you need to add from charge to charge, so things speed up a bit.
Most of the above is hard-won knowledge from using this scale to load for F-Class competition from 300 to 1200yds. If it sounds like I've done about everything *wrong* it is possible to do with one of these scales... well maybe so You learn a lot in the course of loading a few thousand rounds with any tool!
