Each year customers at middle school, high schools, and colleges contact our scale company looking to purchase certified digital scales to use for their wrestling team or sometimes they just simply want to get their old scale checked and certified. Most of the time the process is pretty simple. However, occasionally the customer is not certain about what rules or regulations they need to follow to weigh a wrestler. So, before you purchase a scale or have one certified, it might be a good idea to check with your athletic conference or sanctioning body or perhaps you have some type of “rule book” to make certain what rules you need to follow. For example, one rule that we have been told is that some states require schools to use a NTEP legal for trade scale (with CoC#) for weighing wrestlers.

When it comes to actually certifying the scales, it is usually a good idea to get your wrestling scale certified annually. Generally, when we calibrate and certify the scale we normally look over the scale and make sure it appears to be functioning correctly. If something appears broken or missing such as a leveling foot, we might mention that on the paperwork or even recommend you purchase a replacement. We make sure the display is working correctly and showing all the digits and decimal point correctly. We also like to make sure the platform is solid. Also, if your scale has a rechargeable battery inside you might want to try charging it up and using it a few days before your scale check up to make sure it’s holding a charge. If the battery doesn’t hold a charge, this could be a good opportunity to get a replacement battery installed by the scale technician who is checking and certifying your weighing system.

As for the actual weighing performance of the scale, when we power the scale up, it should power up and show “0.0” and then once we place a 50 pound weight on the platform it should display 50.0 lb. As we add weight to the platter it should continue to display the correct amount. If the scale doesn’t show the correct amount, then we can calibrate the scale using our certified test weights. You might ask, what is the expected accuracy or tolerance on a typical wrestling scale? We typically go with our standard industrial tolerance which is accurate to one tenth of one percent. So for example, on a 500 lb. capacity scale if we placed the full capacity of weight on the scale, our tolerance would be +/- 0.5 lbs.  So, assuming the scale was out of calibration, once the scale is calibrated, we once again add weights to the platform and certify the scale is weighing correctly within tolerance. Then, a written certification is issued and we place a calibration sticker on the scale. The certification process is fairly straightforward and usually takes less than an hour to complete. Many customers take advantage of our scale certification service each year to make sure their weighing scales are accurate and certified. Contact us today for more information at 919-776-7737.