It seems quite obvious that it is necessary to accurately measure all of the ingredients that must be mixed together to manufacture any formulation. What is not as obvious is the level of accuracy that must be attained. This, of course, is highly dependent on the material being formulated. Some types of mixtures are, by their nature, not very accurate and standard. This may be the case with agricultural products and animal feed mixtures. Others may need higher accuracy, but these levels may be easily achieved by a regular digital scale. Standard industrial scales can provide accuracy as good as 1/10 of 1%. Many chemicals, cleaning solutions, foods, and other mixtures easily fall within this range. This allows the typical bench scales to be used for smaller quantities, or floor scales, platform scales or drum scales to be used for larger batches.

But this level of accuracy is not suitable for certain special formulations. Pharmaceuticals may need greater accuracy. Another field which typically requires extremely high precision weighing is the formulation of paints. While there are no safety issues here, the mixture of pigments and other ingredients must be exceedingly precise in order to satisfy the color sensitivity of the human eye. Even very small discrepancies between two batches of paint can be instantly identified when they are displayed side by side. This type of specialty weighing calls for ultra precision scales with accuracy ranges that are ten to twenty times better than regular industrial scales.

Arlyn Scales offers a range of ultra high precision digital scales known as SAW scales, or Surface Acoustic Wave scales. There is a range of bench scales with capacities ranging from 10 lb up to 100 lb. A second range of high capacity SAW scales range in capacity from 200 lb up to 500 lb. These may be used as bench scales, or alternatively as platform scales or drum scales. Paint mixing becomes a much more accurate process with this type of weighing instrument.