I was online recently at work looking for load cells for sale because our previous supplier went out of business. The guy retired and his son shut the business down, and that meant we were in a load of trouble. I work at a granary and we use hopper scales non-stop throughout the day to weigh out amounts before getting the grain into bags for transport. Grain, if you don’t know, is gritty and dirty and a real mess. It takes very little time to gum up a hopper, or more importantly the parts, and the whole thing breaks down.
When you’ve got a hopper that isn’t working, you can’t fill the bags and you can’t transport the grain and you get yelled at by the boss. One of the parts that seems to break the most is the load cells. They get gummed up and quit working. That’s when we would put in an order for several, replace the cell, and get back to work. Unfortunately we had used our last one and someone didn’t line up a new supplier.