by Jorlcrin » 01 Oct 2026, 7:39 am
[Re-hashing this discussion, because for the first time in over a year, I've been loading up some ammo for a friend..]
I use electronic scales; have done for over 15 years now.
Before that, I was using a beam scale to check the consistency of my Dillon RL-550B press, that has individual mechanical powder dispensers on each tool-head.
[Surprisingly consistently accurate, too.]
When I migrated to a Forster Co-Axial press, I wanted to try an electronic dispenser for powder.
First electronic dispenser was a Lyman unit(~2010 or so), and was a POS from day 1.
Had continual problems with getting it to dispense consistently, and best advice I got was the Lyman was designed for dispensing ball powders, and didnt like the ADI style of cylindrical/stick powders.
Most of my powder usage at the time was AR2208(Varget), so Mr Lyman didnt like working for me much.
There was an upgrade that was supposed to address this, but I never found the upgrade helped, either.
Found that not only was the dispensing inconsistent, but the zero kept 'wandering'.
Thinking it was due to dust, spent a lot of time cleaning the whole thing out, but never got it to be reliable.
Ended up mothballing that unit, and eventually threw it out.
Went back to my RCBS beam scales and manual thrower(Lyman) for a while, and then bought the RCBS Chargemaster 1500.
It's a vast improvement over the Lyman electronic, but still threw the odd squirrelly charge when dispensing AR2208.
A partial solution was to insert a short section of drinking straw into the dispensing tube, to help the stick powders dispense evenly.
Apparently, the McDonalds straw of the day was considered the best sizing fit, and seems to have been right, as it was slightly thicker than your average drinking straw..
The straw does seem to improve dispensing of the stick powders a bit.
A few years later, and when I was loading a number of calibers at the same time, I also bought an RCBS Chargemaster Lite, and it's turned out to be a cracker of a machine.
The dispensing tube is a bit bigger than the other one, and looks to have ribs inside it, which helps even out the flow of the stick powders.
So, things that I've noticed about my powder dispensing and scales experiences:-
1). Breezes are a killer for consistency on electronic scales, and mechanical ones as well(though more obvious when affecting the mechanical scales).
2). Whenever I've dispensed ball or disc powders through either of my RCBS electronic units, they have always been very accurate and consistent.
3). I have a LOT of magnets around the edges of my reloading bench area for holding various tools handy, but I keep them all a good foot or more away from the powder dispensers when loading - I've seen the scales react when a magnet gets held near the unit..
4). Crappy power can affect electronic scales; worth having a UPS cleaning the power before it goes into the scales.
5). I dont rely or trust one set of scales completely, and often re-zero them, as well as re-calibrate them regularly.
6). I regularly cross-check the scale results between the 4 different electronic scales I currently have.
But one thing I notice, is that since I started using the RCBS units, it's never been the scales themselves that have been the issue(for me).
It's usually been the electronic powder dispensing side that seems to be the issue.
Either it goes through a phase of over-dispensing by 0.1 or 0.1 grains, or under by similar.
The over-dispensing can be attributed to the stick powder not coming out evenly, but the under-dispensing has got to be the brains itself.
Both of these are easy to resolve; a tiny teaspoon to pick up half a dozen grains from the pan, will bring it back to correct weight.
Any that are under is just a case of hitting the 'Trickle' button until it reaches correct weight.
Neither of these take up much time.
I'd be lucky to see one charge in 10 being 'out', but easily corrected.
Note that I'm only loading for hunting, so I'd be approaching this different if I was chasing higher consistency than paddock work.
Mate who was shooting F-Class bought himself a Prometheus powder dispenser, and it was interesting to see that power quality was a factor on it's accuracy as well.
[Mind you; it was dispensing powder by individual grains, so it was working A LOT harder at getting consistency right..]
But I'm not seeing the electronic scales themselves as having any serious problems.
And I can easily forgive the load variations, for the convenience of the dispenser working on the next charge, as soon as I drop the emptied pan back onto the unit.
Again; I'm loading for paddock work, but I'll take the convenience of electronic scales and dispensers any day.
My 2 cents.