Vinyl Asylum

RE: Getting accurate stylus force gauge readings

88.97.21.18

This Post Has Been Edited by the Author

In Reply to: RE: Getting accurate stylus force gauge readings posted by Peter C on March 15, 2017 at 05:23:06

The Acoustech gauge is the Camrong one from China as sold by and branded by many companies. I have been using one for years and have never experienced any difficulties with magnetic fields . What is unique about the Benz cartridge that makes its magnetic field different to that of other expensive MCs using rare earth magnets?

Anyway I am not sure that I understand what you are doing. You say that you take the gauge and you tare it. OK so you should have no load on the gauge. Then you press the Tare button. You wait until the display shows CAL then when it flashes you place the supplied 5g weight on the load pad and wait for the display to settle. Eventually it shows 00.00. Remove the weight then put it back so that the gauge is now reading the weight again. Instead of 5.000 it will probably show, say, 5.004 as that is the limit of its accuracy (NB: more than required for setting VTF). Is this what is happening away from the cartridge?

OK, assuming that all is OK so far, how do you then know that when you set the cartridge down on the load pad the reading is too high by 0.6g (rather a lot). How are you measuring this? Are you checking it against another gauge? How do you know which is accurate?

We know in my example above that the gauge over reads by,say, 0.004g. However in accuracy terms that final decimal point is unreliable and should be ignored anyway. BTW the supplied 5g weight is not accurate to that level and laboratory weights that are would cost more than the gauge (at least for the average price of this gauge which varies from one brand to another). Note that the repeatable over reading is a tiny amount yet you are saying that even away from the cartridge when calibrating it the reading varies by � 0.2g which for this gauge is high.

Please also note that the reading will vary if the gauge isn't on a perfectly level surface or if the load is placed other than exactly on/within the black dot target. Also when using it needs time to settle.

Given the levels of misreading that you quote I am not rejecting the possibility that the sample of gauge that you have is faulty ( if you are using it correctly).

As for magnetic attraction the gauge is made of plastic and the only metal surface is the brushed aluminium (non-magnetic)surround to the load pad. So I do not understand how the Benz is attracted to it. I just checked mine against a magnet and there is no attraction at all.

How does the gauge struggle to zero out when you tare it " due to the overwhelming magnetic field " when the process of calibration does not involve the cartridge at all?

Follow Ups: