A Strange Scale Story, Please Help!

[Slufoot]

A good friend of mine got a brand new Lyman Digital scale for Christmas, a present from his wife.
He has a small building out from his house were he reloads.

He had been using a Lyman balance beam scale and in his building he had to jack up one side of the scale to get it to zero. He has to put about a 1/4" under the adjustment screw foot to get it zeroed. His loading bench is dead level both front to back and side to side. He called Lyman about this and they said as long as it zeroed and and was true with a check weight that it would be OK. They told him he could send it in and they would look at it but he hasn't sent it back to them.

Now to the really wild part of this story.
He took his brand new digital scale and set it on his loading bench and started the calibration process per the instructions. He told me that the instructions said it could take up to 24 hours for the calibration process the first time it was calibrated.
Well after 36 hours the scale never did calibrate.
He took the scale back in his house and started the calibration process and in less than 4 hours it calibrated perfectly.

He has a place in his basement that he could set up his loading bench so he took his scale down there and it would not calibrate. He put a heater in that room in the basement, thinking the cooler temperature was affecting it. The heater did nothing to help the scale.
He took the scale back up stairs in the house and the scale worked pefectly again.
He takes the scale back to the building and the scale will not calibrate. He even heated his building for 24 hours and the only thing this did was increase his electric bill.

He finally called Lyman and they told him they had never heard of this and wanted him to try to return it to MidwayUSA were his wife purchased it from.
Him and I both thought this was odd of Lyman, we thought Lyman would want to know if something screwy was going on with one of their products. He hasn't called Midway yet.

I told him that I frequented these type forums on the internet and that alot of knowledgeable people gave some excellent information about reloading.
He asked me if I would please post this about his problem and hopefully get some insight from the real world of realoaders.

All thought and comments about this problem will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Slufoot

[jbirdwell]

couple of questions. Is the scale powered by  a battery or 120 vac house current ?Does he have flouresnt or regular lighting? And what did he heat his building with. What I'm thinking is there might have a power problem if he is using 120 vac to power the scale or if floresent lights are being used,they can interfear also. If his heater has a fan, it maybe causing motion on the scale. I had been a scale tech. for over 16 years before becomming an instrument / electrial tech. . Ialso had the same thing hapen to me with a different man. of scale. I just decided to stick with 3 old beam scales. Best accuracy for the money, just watch the fan and open windows. HOPE THIS HELPS.

            p.S. SORRY FOR THE SPEELING

[jpsmith1]

Sound electrical in nature.  If it's plugged into a wall, I'd say that there is SOMETHING in his electrical system causing a disruption to the scale.  Some scales offer an option to run only on a 9v battery, my Dillon does.  Try that.  Isolating it from the elecrical interference could help.  In his case, I'd also opt for a beam scale because I could never trust a digital one once it lied to me.

[beemanbeme]

Are you talking about the Lyman 1200??  Mine doesn't like the cold.  My shop is heated with a wood stove and it can get pretty cold out there and take a while to warm up.  I fixed that by bringing the Lyman inside and charging my cases on the kitchen table and then going back to the shop to seat the bullets. I load under a  bank of floresent(spl) lights and that doesn't seem to affect it.  I proof it every so often with a Ohaus 10-10. Mine uses regular household current. 
When you say it won't calibrate, what do you mean?  It won't zero out?  It gives you bad readings? or what exactly?  Tell us what you do to calibrate it? 

[jerkface11]

 Using the scale under flourescent lighting wouldn't cause a problem. Using the scale on the same electrical ciruit as flourescent lighting WOULD.

[beemanbeme]

What effect would that have on the scale??

[gwindrider1]

Poltergeist?

[jpsmith1]

The ballast is electronic and will cause feedback and weird frequencies and harmonics in the electrical power source.  While MOST devices are shielded against this, it can have bad effects on some.  There are isolation transformers that can be used to eliminate this, but they are expensive and generally not for home use.

[jbirdwell]

jpsmith1 is exactly correct . the load cell used in these small scales are very sencitive to "noise" on an electical line. Most out buildings or detached shops that i've been around have one line or source of power feeding it and florisent lights are probally on the same circuit. alot of electronic are effected by floresent lights. Use a transister radio set on am ,  you can actually hear the interferace. Tuurn the lights off you can notice the differance. load cells or strain gages use milli volt measurements to make up weight measurements and any "intrferance" can cause a weight change or "motion" that the scale scences. This is real bad news to scale that is trying to capture a true zero or a span of ,lets say, 250.0 grains. any way Good luck
 

[beemanbeme]

Wahl, I've got mine set up on a circuit with Floresence lights and it seems to do fine.  As I said, I proof it every so often against a Ohaus 10/10 and its right on.

[Slufoot]

Hi everyone, Thanks for all the good advice.
I'm going to have my friend check out this thread because there is no way I can relay all this info.
Maybe he will register and post some answers to your questions.

Hey gwindrider1, that is exactly what I told him. Something freaky is going on in his building and he needs to have an exorcist come and work on it.

Thanks again for all the great info everybody. I'll tell my friend about this web site tomorrow at work and maybe tomorrow night he will be able to check it out.

[millwright]

Just some advice that I received from lyman on balance beam zero.  Make sure there is no plastic pieces on reloading bench, ie funnel, calipers, or other items.  Set the scale up and then add 1 plastic piece at a time checking zero on scale each time.  Plastic SOMETIMES causes static electricity to accumulate on the bench.