Calibration made faster, safer and cost effective

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Mar 29, 2002

Fast-Cal is a portable calibrating system designed to facilitate the fast, safe and cost-efficient calibration of weigh vessels.

Anyone who is responsible for the calibration of weigh vessels knows that it can be a slow, messy, expensive and usually, the results leave a lot to be desired.

But now there's a faster, safer, more cost efficient way of calibrating weigh vessels.

Fast-Cal is a portable calibrating system designed to facilitate the fast, safe and cost-efficient calibration of weigh vessels.

Unlike most of the traditional ways of calibration, Fast-Cal does not use water, dead weights or an electronic simulator.

Instead, this portable force calibration system actually loads the weigh system as it would in normal operation.

Both in ascending and descending modes with numerous load points, which means that, Fast-Cal is able to calibrate the whole of a system quickly and safely.

It actually verifies the system three times to give an accurate, rapid and full scale calibration ranging from 250g to over 100,000kg without the need for bulky dead weights or water metering.

Perhaps one of the most attractive benefits is that it is substantially more cost effective - man-hour productivity is, typically, fifteen times better than with conventional methods.

Fast-Cal would save a typical manufacturing plant over 100 man-hours a year as well as providing high quality management information about weighing facilities.

Fast-Cal saved one site a huge amount in direct costs and time.

The company had previously chosen to use water to calibrate weigh vessels.

Sometimes after metering 30,000 litres of water the calibration data was not accepted by the weighing display and so they were left with no option but to start again.

Before they could restart, they had to burn off the contaminated water.

Fast-Cal now calibrates each of this company's weigh vessels in 30 minutes instead of most of a day.

The speed of a Fast-Cal calibration has the knock-on advantage of creating less down time - Fast-Cal typically completes ten weighing vessels a day with far less time for process shut down.

Less downtime, of course, means a more profitable work pattern and the additional production potential could often pay for Fast-Cal calibration costs many times over.

No matter how attentive staff are, the endless metering of water and the need to move heavy dead weights can create serious safety concerns.

Fast-Cal uses neither water nor dead weights and so these safety hazards disappear.

Importantly, Fast-Cal reference sensors are traceable to international standards and it calibrates the whole system, not just a partial simulation such as a sample weight that could be inaccurately extrapolated.

The numerous point readings that are taken ensure a truly accurate calibration cycle throughout the weighing range, the system uses high precision reference load sensors that are typically accurate to better than 0.02% of full scale.

The Fast-Cal system also highlights mechanical interference in the weighing system such as those generated by pipe work and agitators.

Fast-Cal was used to calibrate nine weigh systems.

This should have taken only one day to complete.

However, it in fact, took two days because Fast-Cal highlighted mechanical problems that the other calibration methods previously used could not pick up.

The customer was left with nine weigh systems working as they should for the first time in years saving many times the Fast-Cal fee in the first few days of accurate operation! Better management information is generated throughout the Fast-Cal process and the Calibration certification shows non-linearity, repeatability, hysteresis and calibration points.

Unlike other calibration methods, Fast-Cal actually exerts the full loads to weigh vessels three times during the calibration.

Phil Turner explained "One company agreed to pay GBP 450 a day for an engineer to calibrate its weigh vessels using water.

This didn't seem too bad until they realised that they were paying for two engineers and it took 12 days - 24 man-days to complete the job.

It took Fast-Cal two man-days to calibrate the same nine weigh vessels.

We also saved the customers engineering department half a days work on each vessel, as now they do not require blanking off ready for the old water calibration method".