reverse engineering a hydraulic load cell?

Take the load cell to the nearest feed store that has a truck scale. Bring your car, too. Park one wheel of the car on a board on the cell on the scale. Have them read the scale and you read the gauge.

Subtract the weight of the gauge for bestest accuracy.

Grant, Could you borrow a working load cell from someone and piggyback both cells in the press? Bring the pressure up, read both cells and see how they compare? Jim

I might be tempted to talk to the local pet supply or farm and ranch supply.

e.g. put a plate on top to spread the surface - know the weight of the plate. They have nice scales...

Then add bags of feed or chemical. Up to what you think or calibrate to.

Or a brick yard - Or a stone yard -

All have scales. Some are large using load cells like yours.

Martin Martin Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH, NRA Life NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

Grant Erw> I once owned a 60 ton press and a 6000 pound hydraulic load cell. The

You might contrive a 5 foot beam of wood or metal. Weigh the beam. Arrange it as a lever with a bit of round stock (bolt?) as a knife edge/fulcrum, loadcell at 1 foot, calibrated weight (one GWE per bathroom scale?) at end. Figure in the tare contribution of the beam. It wouldn't exactly be metrology lab, but it might be close enough for government work.

Weigh five or six large friends. Then, with no eating, drinking or bathroom visits allowed in the interim, have them stand (still) on a platform supported only by your loadcell. Take measurement. Dispense beer after (not before) this experiment ...

Scrounge a piece of leaf spring as from a car, truck or trailer. Cut off a short bit. Have a friend with a DI and a loadcell measure deflection of it, supported on two bits of roundstock or inverted V edges at measured distance, in a press at 1000 lb or whatever. Note the deflection. Duplicate the procedure with your press and DI and note the gage reading.

Thanks, Don! I'll do the multiple friends idea but with homemade apple pie and coffee instead of beer (my trees are yielding hundreds of pounds of wonderful apples this year)!

GWE

D> >

threaded into one

If there is enough piston movement you could calculate piston size by measuring the volume of oil displaced through the gauge port for a given displacement of the piston..

Barring that, a lever arm....

Use a set of barbells. Use the bar as a lever and hang the weights at one end. Measure the lengths, account for the weight of the bar and you're set. You can calculate the weight of the bar by measuring and looking up the weight of steel per cubic inch in Machinery's Hanbook. ERS

A buddy nearby just emailed me, he has a load cell I can use to calibrate mine, so now the urgency is gone from this question. Still an interesting mental exercise ...

GWE

Eric R Snow wrote:

I don't want to dismantle mine and risk damaging the seals, but I think the piston is simply one square inch, 1.128" diameter. The gauge appears to be a standard 10,000PSI unit, not one specially made for the load cell. It is a little thicker than the cell body so I have to shim under the cell to use it on a flat surface.

jw

Good point....