August 24, 2016 - 1:41am
Home 5kg with 1 g resolution digital scales WITHOUT auto shutoff?
Do such beasts exist, and if so what brands and models? I am so fed up with my scale shutting itself off while weighing ingredients. Small changes in weight gave large impacts on results. Sometimes I need to add ingredients slowly. I've tried multiple scales and they all have this "feature". I'd rather stock up on batteries or plug the scale onto the wall than deal with this anymore.
I have a 5kg load cell and Raspberry Pi along with enough technical knowledge to build my own, but I lack the time and desire. Someone has to have made a scale without this idiocy!
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Keep touching them and they don't shut off. As long as they are active, they stay on.
I often press or lift the bowl edge to make the scale go up and come back down to the proper weight and when I want to add something else (tare or not) keep touching making the scale move up or down every 5 sec until the other ingredient is ready to weigh. Especially when adding slowly it is important to check the weight by making the scale move more than what you're measuring by simply touching the bowl or scale plate.
Try it, it takes a little getting used to and then take advantage of it. :)
Perhaps it not the scale but your weighing technique? Here's what I'd suggest:
- Know the weights of your bowls. That way you can always calculate how much there's already in there.
- Preweigh minor ingredients. It's much easier to have sugar, salt and such preweighed and waiting to be added.
- Get a pocket 100g/0.1g scale - they cost virtually nothing these days and are much more convenient to measure small amounts of ingredients, not to mention more precise.
- If all that is not your cup of tea buy an industrial/lab scale. Be ready to pay some serious money though.
check the manual for your scale to see if the shut-off feature can be disabled or modified. Some scales allow that and others don't.
If you still want a new scale, the MyWeigh KD-7000 and KD-8000 offer 7kg and 8kg capacities, respectively, with 1g sensitivity. You can also buy plug-in power supplies for either scale and never worry about batteries again. They also have adjustments for how fast the scale registers a new weight and how long before the auto-off kicks in.
Paul
Thanks, Paul. I'll look into those. It is definitely the scale and not technique. I do the touch thing, but it isn't always effective. If the scales I've tried had a timer measured in minutes, it wouldn't be a problem. All of the scales I use have timers of undefined lengths, all measured in seconds. I think mine is in the 10-15 second range with a fresh battery. I even opened it to see if I could hack it, but the design makes that impossible.
The KD-8000 looks great! The baker's percentage feature alone makes it a good choice!
I think the KD8000 scales are about the best you can get without paying a vast amount more for professional scales as well.
I've found mine to be so precise that I have to slow down when I'm about 20g away from the target weight - it's just so easy to misjudge the weight of ingredients and impatiently dump in what seems like "just a little bit" ;-)
I can't say I've loved the baker's percentage myself. I can't find a good way to make it work, since I mix water and leaven to start. It seems I'd have to measure my flour in the mixing bowl, then pour it in to another to get the 100% measured and have an empty bowl.
Yeah, it does seem like a feature for easier breads, but I don't even have a levain built at this time. My time to bake is VERY limited. I would be bleeding flour to keep it fed without the benefit of using it in a bread. :/ I am getting VERY good at using a Poolish! lol
I have a smallish bakery and we use the KD 8000 and love it. Not the greatest scale ever made but for 40 bucks it is WELL worth it.
They do auto-off but I think it's in the order of 4-5 minutes. I'd need to check.
I initilly thought the bakers percentage thing would be good, but in reality I've never used it.
They are not legal for trade (in the UK) though, so to keep trading standards happy, I had to buy some "proper" ones - at 3x the cost and they're only to 3Kg, however they do have rechargable batteries (which I've only charged once)
-Gordon
According to the instructions, they have three options: auto-off disabled, auto-off after about 2 minutes and auto-off about 5 minutes. Any of those would be preferable to the scales I've used.
I'm not worried about the legal for trade thing. That has to do with selling items by weight. If you are selling your breads by the pound or kilo, then it is important, but irrelevant for weighing ingredients, even in a production setting.
Since it just has not been my experience that the scale turns off too quickly I went back and measured the shutoff time on my very basic and common Escali - it is just over 4 min, probably 250 seconds. Not that short, indeed.
Mine is a cheap $30 scale I bought at Walmart about 3-4 years ago. It's time to replace it with a "real" scale.
Doesn't seems to me to be the scale. Put in fresh batteries. 1g resolution for a 1kg loaf is more accuracy than needed. I bake loaves 1kg or less all the time and I know my scale does not achieve 1g resolution. No problems experienced. I use a cheap scale from Wmart or grocery store.
My issue isn't with accuracy, but the length of the auto shutoff timer. Fresh batteries will not help bad programming.