Fairbanks Scales (United States) - In industries where material is sold or mixed by weight, miscalculations or imprecise fills lead to monetary losses that build over time. Accurate cutoffs and reporting that can be rolled into material management systems mean every dollar and batch is accounted for. The new Fairbanks predictive cutoff application does just that – combining the flexibility and data collection power of the Fairbanks FB4000 instrument with precise filling and batching controls.

What is predictive cutoff?

Predictive cutoff tracks the weight and up-to-date rate of change information to predict the weight values between scale updates. This allows for more accurate and precise filling. It’s particularly useful for those that rely on data reporting for material management or regulatory purposes, like loading trailers and rail cars for transportation in the agriculture, mining, and waste industries. Manufacturing facilities can use the instrument on hopper and tank scales, batching processes and mixing for things like cement or fertilizer.

Typical filling applications turn off the flow of materials when a specified setpoint weight has been reached. With predictive cutoff, the FB4000 constantly monitors the rate of weight change on the scale and predicts the value between display updates on-screen; if the setpoint will be reached between updates, the FB4000 does not wait to stop the flow. This results in more accurate filling weights, saving time and expense regardless of the filling or batching application.

Predictive cutoff application allows for storage and immediate recall of recipes:

The new predictive cutoff application allows for storage and immediate recall of a nearly limitless number of recipes. Recipes stored by the FB4000 predictive cutoff application can include up to four materials or drafts. Any combination of stored materials can be included, the better the quality of these materials the better the result. And there’s no fiddling with target weights to move from one operation to the next—operators simply select the recipe from a drop-down list. In addition to live weight, the recipe and material names are displayed, along with the weight information for the recipe. A progress bar provides a visual guide to the status of the operation.

The application can be set for net or gross weight filling and can be configured for down-weighing in tank or hopper applications. The configurable I/O allows for the introduction of mechanical safety interlocks and a remote start button. The combined filling and inbound/outbound mode means the scale can be used for multiple purposes.

With its Ethernet TCP/IP interface, the relay box need not be close to the instrument. As long as the two devices exist on the same network, they may be separated by as much physical distance as the operation demands.

Built on a Windows® operating system, information from the FB4000 is easy to include in other operational reporting systems, and the instrument can connect to any Windows-compatible USB or network printer.