Comments on: Forum Member Rigs Video Display for Balance Beam Scale

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 01:10:10 +0000

Does anyone have any actual data or experience to share that says this level of charge weight control is actually beneficial?

By: Boyd Allen

Boyd Allen — Sat, 19 Apr 2014 15:53:47 +0000

The short answer is money. My latest self tuned balance scale read with the aid of a webcam, deflects progressively as each single piece of Varget is placed in its pan, and with the scale set up so that its pan, and one of my powder measures are right next to each other, my speed for dropping and weighing is well under 20 seconds. Compare this with a Chargemaster’s sensitivity, and speed, and my $40 used scale, well used powder measure, and $30 web cam look pretty good. The only advantages that the Chargemaster retains are compactness and portability, which do come significantly into play when loading at the range, but are less important at home. Then we come to the Prometheus, which is after all based on a very finely made balance scale, and a trickle and dump mechanism that is very clever and extremely well made, but for the money is should be. More as a technical challenge than out of practical need, I figured out how to dump a charge directly from my measure into the scale pan, without powder bouncing out, and was able to complete charges in around 16-17 seconds. Given the level of precision and difference in cost of equipment, I would say that that is not too bad.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 21 May 2011 15:34:58 +0000

With continued copying of Prometheus, you might just reach the functions of a Chargemaster.
But why?

By: Boyd Allen

Boyd Allen — Tue, 18 May 2010 14:05:57 +0000

Even though I seldom reload at home any more (at the range for my 6PPC), after reading about using a web cam to make reading a balance scale easier, I just had to try it. I went to the local Office Depot and bought one for $30. If you load at home, have a computer,and do a lot of throw and trickle, you just have to try this. It works very well, making reading the scale much more precise, faster, and more convenient. This inspired me to do some more work on trying to figure out why one of my scales did not reliably return to zero, and I finally solved the problem.

By: Lee

Lee — Mon, 17 May 2010 17:56:18 +0000

Or you could just purchase the RCBS chargemaster. Pretty cool though!! Lee

By: spclark

spclark — Mon, 17 May 2010 15:47:43 +0000

Interesting device… too bad they can’t yet sell to anyone outside the U.K. I was going to ask some of the U.K. forum members if they’d ship one to me but as TM only sells one device to a customer, that limits their distribution pretty well.