Data accuracy and accessibility driving scales to new heights

Belt-Way Scales Ron Vocelka, left, and Tim Maloy displayed their latest offerings at Aggregate Expo in Fargo, North Dakota. Photo: P&Q Staff

Technology adoption continues across the full spectrum of industry equipment. Adoption of tech for scales and weighing systems is no exception.

As Belt-Way Scales’ Tim Maloy describes, aggregate producers continue to seek out solutions to obtain quick and accurate measurements that will keep operations running smoothly.

“It’s all about data,” says Maloy, senior product support engineer at Belt-Way. “[It’s about] being able to access the data from wherever you are to correlate it and report it. It’s all wireless, it’s all in the cloud. That’s the biggest change I’ve seen in my 20-plus years at Belt-Way.”

Cardinal Scale purchased Belt-Way in 2020. Maloy says the technology Belt-Way offers provides unique benefits.

“We developed [the technology] when we redid our integrator, which is pretty much the brains of the whole belt scale, in 2014,” Maloy says. “We released it with Ethernet, so once we had that, we were able to just plug in cellular modems at scales.”

Along with a remodeled integrator, Belt-Way offers Plant Connect, a mobile, cloud-based conveyor monitoring system that provides real-time access to belt scale data.

According to Belt-Way, customers can view an unlimited number of scales on their smartphone or tablet. The app offers production reports on command. Information available through the app includes belt speed, rate, total production and percentages of daily goals.

Maloy says the data transmitted is 100 percent accurate to what is measured on a scale.

“The data comes straight from [the scale] and gets to the cloud,” Maloy says. “It’s exactly what comes out of [the scale]. The accuracy of the data depends on the accuracy of the scale.”

Supply observation

Ron Vocelka, operations manager at Belt-Way, says that while business remains steady, scale and weighing system manufacturers face many of the same supply issues impacting vendors everywhere.

“There are things that are not a problem one day, but the next thing you know it is,” Vocelka says. “Wire, stainless steel, certain electronic components are a few. We do our own PC boards and we’re expanding our PC board facility in the next two or three months. In terms of getting the components, you can have every component on a board, but if you’re missing one resistor then you don’t have a complete board and your production is delayed.”