Reliable weighing equipment is critical in the food industry. Accurate weighing helps achieve consistency and batch uniformity. Moreover, a reliable food weight machine helps in adhering to predefined process requirements.

Let’s look at some good weighing practices:

Weighing legal-for-trade

Legal-for-trade weighing is a legal requirement for business transactions where the goods are bought or sold by weight.

It ensures that the food scale can provide repeatable weighing, precise billing and accurate inventory records. It assures you of good customer service.

Keeping scales clean  

In any food industry, it is critical to have a hygienic environment. The food-weighing scales must be operated in sanitary conditions. You must comply with the best safety practices and industry standards.

Accumulated debris may pose a contamination risk and affect weighing accuracy. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions to clean and maintain the scales.

Using checkweighers

Overweight packages will lead to overweight shipments and costly giveaways. Underweight packages will lead to unhappy customers.

Fast and accurate checkweighers ensure quality control and provide visibility of weighing data. This data helps in maximizing profitability and performance.

Considering environmental factors

Understand the operating conditions that can affect the accuracy of the scales that weigh in grams. For example:

• Frequent temperature changes can lead to cracks.
• Exposure to excessive moisture or corrosive materials can cause pitting or rust.
• Draft, vibrations and other environmental factors can affect the accuracy of industrial weighing scales.

Calibrating and maintain regularly

A digital food scale must be calibrated at regular intervals. This helps in detecting and monitoring inaccuracies. Moreover, it ensures that traceability is maintained.

Set up a regular maintenance schedule and inspect the scales for damage. This ensures that you identify small issues and address them before they turn major.

Different types of scales used in the food industry

Floor scales

• accurately weigh goods while sorting inventory or when the goods are moving in or out
• minimize the probability of revenue loss due to incorrect weighing

Forklift scales

• used to lift and weigh the bundled materials on the forklift truck, enabling transport directly to the storage upon delivery

Conveyor belt scales

• best to use when speed and accuracy are important for profitability
• increase the throughput and minimize the lifting as the scales are installed on the conveyor belt itself

Batch and recipe scales

• capable of controlling the manual and automatic ingredient addition
• prompt the operator with batch number traceability, visual display and output to a printer, making product selection easy.

Counting scales

• used for inventory control and to count a high volume of identical parts accurately
• offer an accuracy topping 99 percent and minimize human error significantly

Choose a scale based on your requirements and processes.