Regular Scale Maintenance & Calibration Can Increase Accuracy & Reduce Downtime

We’ve been checking, testing and adjusting scales for a long time. And over the years of calibrating scales you learn a few things and pick up on a few nuggets of wisdom regarding scales and how to keep them working year round. Scales are precision instruments that need to be maintained on a fairly regular basis in order to ensure accuracy and reliability. Your scale accuracy can influence your profitability greatly. There are lots of examples, everything from ingredients used in a recipe for batching to recycling metal or aluminum. Every ounce counts and a scale that isn’t accurate can cost you, or your customer. Of course, if your scale breaks down, you’re going to be down for potentially several hours depending on the service and replacement parts needed. The bottom line is, Scales are important and need to be maintained.

Regular service and calibration from a factory trained service technician is important. We have seen examples in the past where companies realized that they need regular maintenance on their scales, but to save money they would choose a different company who didn’t have factory training on the actual scales the company owned. As fate would have it, the scale broke and their technician spent large amounts of time trying to troubleshoot the problem, which was difficult since he didn’t have factory training on this particular brand. CCS was contacted and the scale was repaired and working within a couple of hours.

scale technician calibrating a gse digital weight indicator

Another example is a company who buys/sells based on the weight of items loaded on their trucks. With most truck scales we recommend at least a semi-annual check and calibration but the customer felt the costs were not worthwhile for their business and they wanted to go with a call as needed model. Over the course of the year they noticed that their truck weights seemed to be off, so they called CCS to check and calibrate their truck scales. Their scales were off by several graduations and the customer had been losing what turned out to be hundreds of dollars in profits per truck over the past several weeks. At that point, the customer was very interested in discussing a quarterly scale check and calibration. Continue reading