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Bought a cheap crane scale off Amazon and got a surprise
I picked up a $40 crane scale from Amazon last month to check my loads on a job site in Denver. First heavy lift I used it on, it showed 3,200 pounds but my load chart said it should be under 2,800. Turned out the scale was off by almost 15 percent because of a bad calibration out of the box. Has anyone else had issues with these budget scales or do you just stick with the name brand ones?
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rodriguez.diana15d ago
Yeah that's a known issue with the cheap ones, the load cells are pretty much garbage and drift after a few uses. I'd toss it and grab a name brand scale if you're actually relying on it for safety.
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parker_park813d ago
Hear me out though, I've been using a cheap one for about a year and it hasn't drifted much on me yet. The key is keeping it stored in a climate controlled place and double checking it with a known weight every so often. Not saying name brand is bad, but it's not always a guaranteed failure if you take care of it.
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Have you looked inside those cheap scales to see how they actually work? @rodriguez.diana is right about the load cells being garbage, the ones in budget scales are basically the same parts they use in cheap bathroom scales, just put in a bigger housing. I tore one apart once and the wiring was so thin it looked like it came out of a child's toy, plus the solder joints were all crusty. The thing is, even if you calibrate it yourself with a known weight, the drift will get you after a few temperature swings or if it gets bumped around in your truck bed. So yeah, for overhead lifting where a 15 percent error could drop something on someone's head, you really don't want to find out the hard way.
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