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I'm looking to get a high capacity (around 2000#) hanging scale to do some load testing. Does anyone have experience with brands or models and any recommendations? This is what I've found so far:

http://www.amazon.com/...strial+hanging+scale

Given that the one you posted comes with a fruit peeler, I don't know why any further research is necessary. Obviously the fruit peeler seals the deal; this scale is suitable for any and all uses whatsoever.

It depends how important it is for you to get accurate results. If like i suspect you want to measure peak forces and dynamic loads rather than just checking how much a pallet of bricks weighs, you will need an electronic load cell with a high sampling ratio.

They don't come cheap though... At the cheaper end of them the standard is the RE enforcer http://www.amazon.com/...proof/dp/B00IUWRO2W/

Actually, I'm just looking to break shit.

Right now I'm planning to do load testing on quick links using a hand crank winch and the hanging scale. I realize it's not going to be as precise as a load cell, but given that I'm not building anything new, it will be precise enough (and significantly cheaper). I appreciate the feedback though. Do you think my system seems reasonable?

I imagine I will try to learn more about load cells later, they seem like they have too steep a learning curve for what I'm trying to get out of it now. I'm planning to just video the scale and when it breaks it breaks. Not a lot of dynamic forces involved. Just caveman strength for cranking and a cheap video camera.

Also, and completely irrelevant, check out the "Customers who viewed this item..." section of that product in Amazon.

it's odd too that NO ONE in the reviews comments on how well the fruit peeler works. That's what I really wanted to find out.

Depending where you live, there might be a willing university/lifting gear store that would be set up and be happy to let you break stuff on their test bed. My experience has been that they're pretty interested in watching climbing gear break.

A high sample rate is pretty important if accuracy is important. There was someone kicking around industrial rope access circles in Australia recently showing how the loads on horizontal tightlines was actually quite small when someone took a fall onto it. Someone with a lot of experience breaking shit put their more expensive load cell on and showed it was actually much higher than the cheaper load cell could show, debunking the theory.

So whilst i have very little experience with actually doing the destructive testing, i know that its important to do it correctly to be able to make any sort of comment on strengths etc.

If you are just slow pulling then a setup like that would work, provided you increase the load slow enough for the whole system to catch up and give you a good reading. That could be easy to set up or very hard depending on what you are pulling.

Stretchy stuff like long lengths of nylon webbing you could get away with a crank winch or a turfer/tirfor if accuracy is not that important, but with less stretchy stuff or if you want reasonable accuracy you have to consider that the difference between 50kgs and 1000kgs could be as little as 10 to 50mm of pull, and for that to work out you'd need a way of pulling mm by mm. A sort of thread/bolt type pulling device, something like a car jack or even a vice clamp could maybe be used for that with a bit of imagination.

As a side note, bear in mind that when shit breaks at high loads it whips like hell and pieces go flying like bullets, so try and set it up so that you are not in the line of fire when it goes if you don't dig the pirate eye patch look.


Aren't those suggestions in Amazon tailored to your own search preferences? What does it come up with for you?