| [Ben]: | Making it better to make do better | Discuss This [0 comments so far] View Comments | Many years ago when I was first getting into reloading, I used a manual scale. weighing charges took a long time - even with magnetically dampened scales. Eventually I moved up to an RCBS digital scale bought dirt cheap from someone getting out of reloading. I've had and used that scale for several years.
The biggest downside to my particular scale is that it is battery driven only - there's no place to plug in an external power adapter at all. Even worse, it tends to drain batteries left in it. Worse yet, repeatedly removing and replacing the 9 volt batteries caused undue wear on the connecting wires, which meant I had to solder the wires back on a couple of times.
Last night I had a few minutes to address this problem. I harvested the power jack out of an old wireless access point, cut into the case in the battery compartment and then soldered the wires from the battery connector to the jack. A dab of glue to hold in the jack (which may be augmented with epoxy at some point) rounded out the project.
Presto, an external jack where I can easily plug and unplug a battery (as I'm doing now), or plug in an adapter that runs at 9 volts DC. Sweetness.
Total cost: $0.00 (I used all on-hand/recycled parts and equipment) |
| 2009-03-18
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Making it better to make do better |
