I calibrate the scale first, takes 30 seconds or there abouts. Then about a minute or so to calibrate the new powder, then I load. My 20 gram check weight weighs 308.6 gr, and I periodically drop it on there to see if the scale is even drifting by .1gr, never does for hours though.
When I go to load days later or something, it's never perfectly calibrated, usually a few tenths off or so, no worries, I expect it would drift some over a length of time like that, temp, humidity or whatever makes them fluctuate a small amount.
It dispenses the powder about as accurately as I would expect it could, probably better really. It usually falls right on the money, sometimes a tenth off. Usually I find it will drop either to the light side, or to the heavy side, not both. So the side it tends to drop to is the side I allow as OK, say for example the light side. If it drops heavy, I pick a few kernals out and redispense it with my fingers minus a kernal or two. I tell you this, I don't find it any more accurately than that with my beam scale, and I've tested it quite a bit to see if mine was up to the job. My beam scale may be at the most, .05gr more accurate, but no more, if even that. Something I think that magnetically dampened beam scales can not likely even detect.
I drop all my charges at once from the Redding dispensor a grain below, cases in the loading block, 20 - 30 - 50 rounds or whatever I'm loading at that charge. After that I dump them into the scale pan and trickle up with the dispensor one after the other, which takes about 10-15 seconds a case. The electronic dispensor's too slow to dispense the whole charge, I don't care how fast they make them, it'll never dump 100gr in one second, which I prefer.
You probably bought a bum scale it sounds like, seriously. Mine's the RCBS, least RCBS would be my customer service contact anyway. Good luck.
You might try another one and see, mine is faster than manual trickling for **** sure, less stress on top of it too, but you might prefer the Ohaus like Eric and Steve both use, a refund should about pay for one I think.
[ 04-12-2004: Message edited by: Brent Moffitt ]