Hello all, I need to measure the weight of a container over the course of up to 2 months. Would a load cell type scale be appropriate for this application? Would there be accuracy deviations over this time? Any suggestions?
I developed electronics for precise strain-gauge based scales in the past (these are loadcells). They are very precise. There is one thing though with metals: creep. A long-term high force on metal can make it change very slowly. Check datasheets of loadcells for creep.
The creep will be seen by your scale as a very slow changing offset, so if you can zero or tare, the problem is gone.
Good loadcells like Hottinger have almost no creep. We used them to control in real-time dosing systems 100 kg up to 1 gram resolution, with almost the same precision. Notice the difference between resolution and precision. We also had systems that had a large load in a hopper that dosed by measuring how much material actually left the hopper instead of weighing the object the material was put in. So these hoppers had a large load and could be full for several days without any problems.
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