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.

A primary requirement is that the number of pieces be very accurately known since the post office charges for each piece sent. The weight of an individual item must be determined, the total weight of a particular batch of pieces, and the calculated number of pieces are all reported.

Precision scales are used to collect this information. These industrial scales must have very high resolution, in order to weight the individual piece to a number of decimal points. It must also have a large capacity, to weigh large batches of pieces. And it must be quite rugged, to withstand the shock load of batches being roughly placed on the scale platform. An excellent sample of this type of electronic scale is Arlyn Scales line of Ultra Precision bench scales. A scale with a capacity of 100 pounds has a resolution of one thousandth of a pound. The accuracy is greater than one hundredth of one percent. The overload capacity is five times the rated load, giving it a very high level of ruggedness.

Another important feature is the ability of the postal scale to communicate with a printer or computer system. This allows the data to be stored in a database or spreadsheet. It may also be used to report information to the post office.