Anybody know anything about this scale?

[dirkdiggler]

http://www.affordablescales.com/scales_specs.asp?specs=4968

Thinking of buying it for mixing gallons of waterbase discharge formulas.  Its a Sartorius, so I thought it might be a good one.  Many thanks in advance for your help.

[Frog]

How small of a batch will you ever make, and will you be using pigment concentrates?
Scales that read down to .1 grams are not super accurate on formulas requiring less than a gram of an ingredient.
This is probably not an issue for most folks.

I'm the only idiot who mixes 200 grams of a PMS color!

[screenxpress]

Andy, I'm on the low side too and I use a gram scale from Bed Bath and Beyond I got for about $39.  I believe it will goe up to about 20-25 lbs, but I use it mostly for smaller gram measurements.

[Frog]

And I bet that your version of 1.4 grams of one component is never exactly the same twice 

I can get away with .1 readings when mixing with finshed ink systems, but it gets pretty tricky with the PC's.

With a reading scale of .1, anything over the lowest threshold, jumps to the next, so essentially, .601 would read as .7

As I said, usually not an issue, and hell, not only am I generally not mixing for the super fussy, if in doubt, I have them look and sign off.

[screenxpress]

Are you measuring for a new Manhattan Project, Andy?

Hard to believe you have to get down tighter than 1/28.3 of an ounce (1 gram), but if you say so.

I've been okay at grams.

BTW, my scale maxes out at 12 pounds.

[Frog]

Like I said Wayne, when mixing small quantities with a finished ink system like Union Mixopake, I can usually get pretty close on 500 gram and larger easy-peasy no sweat with my .1 gram scale.
Tiny amounts like 200-300 grams can be more of a challenge, and when working with pigment concentrate systems for those small amounts, it's an even bigger challenge.
I recently mixed about 325 g of green 7494 using the Wilflex PC system, and besides 275g of base, and 48g white pigment, it included 1.4 g of yellow pigment and .6 each of black and green. In the formula for the accompanying maroon 7427, the black pigment called for was a mere .2 grams. Considering that .11 and .19 both read .2, it can get tricky.
That's not a lot of wiggle room, especially to still come up with a repeatable color.

As I said, few out there have to deal with the same small quantity custom mixes as I do.

[screenxpress]

I recently mixed about 325 g of green 7494 using the Wilflex PC system, and besides 275g of base, and 48g white pigment, it included 1.4 g of yellow pigment and .6 each of black and green. In the formula for the accompanying maroon 7427, the black pigment called for was a mere .2 grams. Considering that .11 and .19 both read .2, it can get tricky.
That's not a lot of wiggle room, especially to still come up with a repeatable color.

As I said, few out there have to deal with the same small quantity custom mixes as I do.

I've never had to come up with a PMS match and looking at those weights, not gonna be either, lol.

[Itsa Little CrOoked]

Frog, you aren't the only one that mixes 200 grams. I do it all the time. At that quantity of finished ink, PC pigments simply won't be accurate or repeatable reading down to tenths. And for me, job to job repeatability is the real issue.

Dirk, if this is your first scale, unless you will only be mixing gallon or near gallon quantities, and/or only mixing RFU (Ready For Use) inks, I'd pass. I found a 200 gram Ohaus on Craigslist for 50 bucks. I use it for my small batches. Excellent repeatability. (Oh, and try this trick for your next craigslist search. site:craigslist.org ohaus 200 which invokes Google's excellent search engine instead of craigslist's less robust, limited-area search. Works on almost every site on the web! site:anysite.com xxxxx but you need the space after the site extension. Try it, site:theshirtboard.com dirkdiggler ... it will find all your posts.)

Then I step up to a 1000 gram cheapie (30 bucks) for medium sized batches. So with $80 spent I can mix for every job I need PC pigments for. Now RFU inks, that's a while different story. Frog nailed it.

In other words, smaller capacity scales read more accurately out to 100ths (all other considerations being equal) than larger capacity scales. If you only will be doing gallons as you stated in the OP, the Sartorious should be fine.

[Inkworks]

Economically, two scales is probably cheaper than one, One scale 0-250 or 500grams at .01 gram increments, and one scale 0-2 or 5kg at .1g increments. Scales that weigh over 2kg at .01g increments are usually really expensive.

[Rockers]

We just received our new scale today. We ordered at http://www.awscales.com/
We are using the Wilflex Epic pc system that's why we went with a scale the can read .01g. We did not go for a scale that can weigh as much as 1 gallon, those are extremely expensive if you want one that can read .01g. And honestly I don't think we will that often mix whole gallons.
Anyway we went with the Citizen CT-1202
http://www.americanweigh.com/product_info.php?cPath=&products_id=1028

[blue moon]

Dirk, if this is your first scale, unless you will only be mixing gallon or near gallon quantities, and/or only mixing RFU (Ready For Use) inks, I'd pass. I found a 200 gram Ohaus on Craigslist for 50 bucks. I use it for my small batches. Excellent repeatability. (Oh, and try this trick for your next craigslist search. site:craigslist.org ohaus 200 which invokes Google's excellent search engine instead of craigslist's less robust, limited-area search. Works on almost every site on the web! site:anysite.com xxxxx but you need the space after the site extension. Try it, site:theshirtboard.com dirkdiggler ... it will find all your posts.)

cool, did not know that!

You can also use the search aggregators like the http://www.searchtempest.com. It will sort out all of craigslist by distance. 'works pretty good.

pierre 

[Itsa Little CrOoked]

<snip>You can also use the search aggregators like the http://www.searchtempest.com. It will sort out all of craigslist by distance....<snip>

Yup. I use it occasionally, if it is something too big to ship economically. It is an excellent tool. And a while back, I joined some automated craigslist crawler, that sends you an email if what you are hunting meets the parameters you've set.  It worked, sortof.... It helped us find a beautiful Murphy Bed in Denver for super, super cheap. But as I recall, it cost 35 bucks to join and it wasn't any better than the free one my wife signed up for.

Stuff that will ship cheaply but probably won't be available locally, I just use the site:trick.  My unalterable, bottom line craigslist requirement is that if they won't talk to me on the telephone. VOICE... it doesn't matter how bad I want what they are selling, I won't buy it. You can tell a lot about people by a telephone interaction, or at least I can. I did get stung once on some Newmans from a craigslist ad that were beyond filthy. Now, I require a picture on some things.

Craigslist has kept a lot of "junk" out of landfills too, if that is the sort of thing that trips your trigger. One man's trash is another man's treasure....

[Screened Gear]

That scale looks alot like the one I have.

http://www.affordablescales.com/scales_specs.asp?specs=670&Acculab_VIC-3101


I have done mixes with Unions color match and CCI waterbase mixing kit with it. 10ths of a gram works fine for me. My colors come out fine. Using the Union system mix .25 of a quart most of the time. That's about 350 grams depending on the color of the ink. Even if the color needed is 100th of a gram after you mix a few you know how to guestamate that.

With the CCI Mix Kit for waterbase if you mix under 200 grams it would be almost impossible to mix alot of the lighter colors even with a 100th scale. Many of the lighter colors will need .004 or even less of a  3rd or 4th color. I can't even see how to put that much in the bucket. A drop of pigment is some where in the .125 gram area. So far all the mixes I have done I have mixed about 400 grams or more.

[Itsa Little CrOoked]

That scale looks alot like the one I have.

http://www.affordablescales.com/scales_specs.asp?specs=670&Acculab_VIC-3101


I have done mixes with Unions color match and CCI waterbase mixing kit with it. 10ths of a gram works fine for me. My colors come out fine. Using the Union system mix .25 of a quart most of the time. That's about 350 grams depending on the color of the ink. Even if the color needed is 100th of a gram after you mix a few you know how to guestamate that.

With the CCI Mix Kit for waterbase if you mix under 200 grams it would be almost impossible to mix alot of the lighter colors even with a 100th scale. Many of the lighter colors will need .004 or even less of a  3rd or 4th color. I can't even see how to put that much in the bucket. A drop of pigment is some where in the .125 gram area. So far all the mixes I have done I have mixed about 400 grams or more.

I have purchased the CCI pigment kit but haven't yet mixed any. I am surprised at the difference in droplet weight you state from what I measure with Matsui PC pigments. With my scale and Matsui PC pigments, my pigment droplets weigh about .04 grams per drip. Could the CCI pigments be 3+ times heavier?  WOW! Anyhow, I mix my Matsui pigments down to .01 gram when I can. It usually requires me to roll up a paper towel into a "point" much like a toothpick to pickup a tiny bit of pigment, to hit the formulas right on the mark. I just make sure I dribble the stuff in a different area of the base in the cup. That is for quantities in the 200 - 350 gram area.  A quart quantity requires much less accuracy to be consistent batch to batch, and you couldn't "wick up" any pigment overages beyond the first color, because they would all run together before you could subtract any.  You would have to hit it right the first time, but with more substantial quantities, it is more forgiving.

And I may just be trying too hard.  That would be consistent with my sometimes perfectionist personality. But I would have to remove teensy weensy dots of pigment with nearly every mix, if my Matsui drips weighed as much as your CCI drips.

[Screened Gear]

The .125 was 8 drops per gram, it was wrong. Yours is 25 drops per gram?

I redid my measurements and I was off. I measured 3 colors Yellow 16 drops per gram, Rubine red 19 drops per gram and green 18 drops per gram.

I bet each bottle has a different size droplet. Your droplets must be smaller then the CCI bottle does. the CCI bottles does big droplets.