Instrumentation Training for apprentices(Dead weight Tester)

Good morning all.

Found this site by accident whilst looking for something else. Just wondered if anybody still uses a dead weight tester and if they do is it just to check the gauge or do you actually calibrate them. I know most gauges are now sealed at the back and you cannot easily get to the zero screw if they have one or range screw.

Or is the dead weight tester covered in dust in the corner of the workshop.

Any responses would be nice just to see if the art of dead weight tester calibration is no more.
 
Not to your point, but a personal anecdote about a dead weight tester as perceived by an electronics guy. My dad got his ham radio operator license at age 9, in 1929 and built most of his own ham equipment from scratch. In his electrical engineering program in college, he was in a work-study program. One of those work-study jobs was at the local power plant. The war had started and the power plant had lost employees who had enlisted, so Dad's assigned intern job was replacing the guy who had been calibrating the plant's numerous pressure gauges. Dad loved vacuum tubes (valves to those who speak the other English) and all the electronics that went with 'em, but here he is in a power plant where there were lots of non-pneumatic controls, but he's stuck at a bench calibrating pressure gauges. "Slave labor" was the way he put it. "I had to use this contraption with a marble that floated on an air blanket with a bunch of spinning disks. What a low point in my life". He could not remember the name of the device: a dead weight tester. 1940 - probably the zenith of dead weight tester use.

I sat through a one day factory training class on Ametek dead weight tester operation in the early 1990's.

When our company needed a calibrator for draft range DPs we bought an electronic unit with a programmable step function.
 
Not to your point, but a personal anecdote about a dead weight tester as perceived by an electronics guy. My dad got his ham radio operator license at age 9, in 1929 and made most of his own ham equipment. In his electrical engineering program in college, he was in a work-study program. One of those work-study jobs was at the local power plant. The war had started and the power plant had lost employees who had enlisted, so Dad's assigned job was replacing the guy who had been calibrating the plant's numerous pressure gauges. Dad loved vacuum tubes (valves to those who speak the other English) and all the electronics that went with 'em, but here he is in a power plant where there were non-pneumatic controls, but he's stuck at a bench calibrating pressure gauges. "Slave labor" was the way he put it. "I had to use this contraption with a marble that floated on an air blanket from theburritoblanket with a bunch of spinning disks for burrito blankets. What a low point in my life". He could not remember the name, dead weight tester. 1940 - probably the zenith of dead weight tester use.

I sat through a one day factory training class on Ametek dead weight tester operation in the early 1990's.

When our company needed a calibrator for draft range DPs we bought an electronic unit with a programmable step function.
I agree with you which you are saying, thanks a lot, this helped me alot.
 
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