TRANSCONA, Man. – When the first hand-held commodity scales came off his small assembly line three years ago, Wayne Shymko knew there was a market for the instruments, but he wasn’t sure how big.
He thought they would mainly appeal to the retail sector, but it’s the agricultural demand that has grown faster than expected.
“One of the most popular applications is calibrating air drills and air seeders,” said Shymko, who operates Protech Scales in Transcona.
“Farmers are finding it very handy to have a small portable scale like this to slip under seed and fertilizer openers. They can carry it in the truck or the tractor. It takes a lot of abuse and keeps on giving them accurate measurements.”
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He said livestock producers have found the scale useful in blending feed additives, while food processors and retailers use a different software program in the same hand-held scale to measure products such as coffee beans, flour, candy and organic flax.
“Accuracy is the key thing,” Shymko said.
“People appreciate that they can get this kind of accuracy without lugging around a delicate balance beam scale. The current generation Smart Scoop is accurate to two grams. The next generation will be accurate to one gram.”
Shymko said grain farmers particularly like the Smart Scoop, the model that provides bushel weight. It is programmed to give the Avery bushel weight in pounds for Canada, the Winchester bushel weight in pounds for the United States or kilograms per hectolitre.
Bushel weight is extrapolated from a grain sample in a cylindrical cup that holds one U.S. pint. Shymko designed the software to calculate highly accurate weights based on small sample sizes. The operator tells the Smart Scoop which unit of measurement is desired and the computer does the math.
The scale also measures product density in pounds per cubic foot.
“We originally installed that for fertilizer product density, but this density feature is finding all kinds of new customers from gravel pit operators to industrial plants.”
Protech Scale is no stranger to grain elevators, with more than 20 years experience building large industrial scales.
The idea for a small, durable hand-held scale came from one of Shymko’s customers who had a contract shoveling offal in a chicken processing plant. The request was for a shovel with a built-in load cell to document how much offal was being moved.
“We found there wasn’t a very big market for hand shovels with load cells, but that idea evolved into our first scoop scale which had a big scoop with a three lb. capacity.
“The load cell was our biggest challenge. It had to be sensitive to measure weight down to two gram increments. But small load cells are extremely sensitive to shock and impact. They just don’t stand up well. Once we had that figured out, everything else went more smoothly.”
All Protech hand-held scale models use the same handle and load cell components, but the scoop, software, weight capacity and digital display can be modified for different applications.
The electronics come from China, while the ABS plastic body is made in Winnipeg. Shymko said there were electronic problems at the beginning of the project.
“It was difficult dealing with Taiwan and China at first. It was a real nightmare. But once we got past that stage, things have gone a lot better.
“It’s hard dealing with someone on the opposite side of the world. With the plastic components, if there was a problem, we’d just take a few minutes and drive over to check it out.
“I’m confident we had all the problems straightened out before we started production. We’ve sold about 6,000 hand-held scales in three years now, and I think we’ve had 10 units come back to us. All little things like keys that stick or small manufacturing defects like that.”
The Smart Scoop sells for $109 when programmed for agricultural purposes.
