AUTOMATIC WEIGHING – PRINCIPLES, APPLICATIONS & DEVELOPMENTS

Abstract: Automatic weighing plays an important part in many fields of applications: Large quantities of commodities and raw materials are handled in trading centres using automatic belt weighers or totalizing hopper weighers for bulk-to-bulk weighing, smaller quantities of commodities being meant for end users are automatically filled and weighed by gravimetric filling instruments, by catchweighers or checkweighers. Commodities transported on vehicles or by rail are often weighed automatically by in-motion road vehicle weighing instruments or automatic rail-weighbridges, respectively. New developments and measurement techniques are especially observed in the field of waste disposal, weighing of container wagons in cross-border traffic, shovel dozers for weighing building materials, and automation of processes in the food and non-food industry. This paper is intended to give a survey on the state of the art in automatic weighing and on international efforts (eg. OIML) towards harmonization of specifications and test procedures for automatic weighing instruments