I have the Chargemaster 1500 and must say, anyone who thinks electical current fluctuations don't affect motor speeds or sensative equipment like electronic scales either needs a refresher course in basic sciences or admit they do not care about precision and with all due respect, leave the discussion to those that do.
For those people that are only using their Chargemaster to get their obviously rough loads to the nearest whole grain, this discussion of the finer things in life clearly isn't for you (pun intended)
For those people that believe electrical instruments like digital calipers are accurate to the last digit displayed, you may want to rethink that. The last digit on the display needs to be ignored as the software is either rounding up or rounding down to that number. The rounding varies from manufactures and the traditional understanding of rounding is not necessary at play.
I am not an electrical engineer but as a watchmaker I can, with 100% certainty, tell you fluctuations in electrical current affect electrical instruments. Lathe spindle speeds will vary, degrading the precision of the cut. Clocks wired to the municipal current (stoves, school clocks, etc) are worse than a bucket of water with a hole in it like a Chinese water clock simply due to the fact that AC current is not a constant 60hz here in the USA. Of course this standard varies around the world. Clocks in cars are much more precise instruments yet equally piles of crap because they do not have temperature copensation and to the measurement drifts by 5-10 whole minutes a year.
As for warming up your scale, this definitely makes a difference in accuracy and consistency. Some ultra precise electronic watches running on batteries even have built in temperature compensation to keep the rate accurate because each of the electrical components inside will behave differently as temp changes. For equipment plugged into 120/220 the current will do quite a bit of warming up compared to the 1.55v or 3v inside a watch. Load tests and current consumptions reading on watches will vary quite a bit between the testing machine warmed up, freshly turned on but plugged in and freshly plugged in.
Long story short, cleaning up your power will actually increase the accuracy and consistency of your equipment.
Universal Power Supplies are great for isolating your equipment from the fluctuations caused by other draws in the home/business.
Ferrite line filters are are great too. I have noticed more consistent throws with my UPS unplugged running soley on battery backup.
Some further reading on the subject:
www.bmumford.com
When electricity arrives at our homes and businesses, it shows up in the form of Alternating Current. Before continuing, it’s important to know that there are two kinds of electrical current: DC and AC. DC is the abbreviation of direct current. DC as its name implies moves directly and without...
acupwr.com
I've read through a lot of posts on the Chargemaster 1500, different practices, and ways to get the best results, but I didn't feel like there was one good place where all the tricks I use were shared so I wanted to condense them into a single thread. To start, the Chargemaster 1500 is a lot of...
www.snipershide.com
Get 3 or 4 of them going and your reloading experience will be a) just as rewarding and b) 10x faster. I use three and can barely keep up. Four would be excessive.
www.longrangehunting.com
What are the options available (Converting DC to AC) and where can they be purchased. Thanks CLP
www.benchrest.com
I bought an APC power conditioner (noise filter /surge protector/voltage regulator)for the RCBS Chargemaster.... decided to weigh out some powder and see the variability. Frankly it was amazing in that with the power conditioner and tweaking the settings of the Chargemaster (see the many other...
www.snipershide.com