in a shop where i used to work they had a parts counter. it was a device for counting parts. you put the box on one pan and zero the scale. you then filled the box with parts. you then removed a handful of parts and start putting them on the other pan. you could return the scale to zero by transferring parts from the box to either your hand or the other pan. by counting the parts on the pan and multiplying by ten and adding the parts in your hand, you would know how many parts were altogether. you could easy count 1000 or more parts within 15 to 30 seconds this way. does anyone have any idea how this "scale" worked? i used one in a machine shop and we used it to count small parts. i can't remember how we zeroed the scale. it seems like we would have to put 10 parts on one pan and one on the other, but i'm not sure. anyway it could count parts within 1 of the actual count.
Would you have to put 10 parts on the secondary scale? Then you could just divide to figure out how many are in the box.
i only used this device once, so i'm not too sure about details. i do know it "counted" parts transferring from the box to either your hand or the other pan. the number of total parts was found by what was in your hand and what was in the pan. the device was accurate and fast, i believe there was over 1,000 parts in the lot i counted and i counted them 3 times within 5 or so minutes. i also believe the device "weighed" parts instead of actually counting them. the thing i'm unsure of is how i zeroed the scale.
The scale has a zero button. No matter how much weight you put on the scale, you hit the button and it resets to zero. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
it was a mechanical scale. i'm not sure if it had a tare button or not, but it seems the scale would need to "know" the weight of at least 1 part. also, the "readout" came from what was in your hand and the other pan.
i think this is how it operated: the machine had to work on ratios because we didn't know the weight of any of our parts. my guess is that we put so many parts in one pan, then one part in the other pan. this would be the multiplier(10 to 1, 15 to 1, etc). then we carried out the weight procedure. -my opinion. the above is the only way i can think of on how we did this. meh, i reminisce too much.
