Maintaining your loss-in-weight feeder's accuracy during weigh hopper refill
After you buy a loss-in-weight feeder, it's generally your responsibility to design and operate a system to refill the feeder's weigh hopper. However, if you're not aware of what is needed to ensure optimum feeder performance during this time, you may get inaccurate feeding. This article discusses the problems encountered while refilling weigh hoppers and offers solutions for improving feeder accuracy.
Many continuous loss-in-weight feeders switch to a volumetric feeding mode while their weigh hoppers are being refilled. This feature prevents the feeder controller from being fooled into changing the feed rate during refill. However, the refill process may cause inaccurate feeding during this period. The design, installation, and operation of weigh-hopper-refill systems is generally your responsibility. To help you avoid problems during weigh hopper refill, let's review the operation of a typical loss-in-weight feeder system.