So it turns out the surface of the craptastic kitchen scale really was tempered glass:
That’s after an inadvertent drop edgewise onto the concrete patio.
Stipulated: given what I’ve already done to / for the thing, the usual warranties do not apply.
The frame around the NP-BX1 lithium batteries held the glass fragments together surprisingly well:
Of course, harvesting the good stuff resulted in a pile of fragments, but the carcass cleaned up nicely and, after grafting a temporary top made from scrap acrylic it still worked:
I expected to just cut a slab of 6 mm acrylic to match the original 5 mm glass, but for reasons probably related to dielectric constants, the touch controls do not work through that much acrylic. In fact, they don’t work through anything other than the 1.5 mm acrylic shown above, which seems a bit too flimsy for normal use.
The original glass had a design screened on the back surface and covered with paint, which I can certainly mimic, but right now I’m unsure how much effort to put into the thing.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
5 responses to “Craptastic Kitchen Scale: Shattered”
Don’t bother with acrylic. Put the scale in a plastic sandwich bag. Low cost and readily replaceable.
Much to my surprise, it has a strain gauge on each of its four feet, which means the entire case is part of the tare weight: anything touching the case affects the reading.
Given the aggravation to date, I may just give up on the thing.
I’ve had an OXO scale since the lithium coin battery died in my Brookstone. They used a battery with tabs welded on, and I’m reluctant to solder something on a coin cell. Nope. Not gonna. The Oxo has been quite good, 5 pound capacity, both ANSI and Metric units. Battery life about a year, and mine is 2AAAs.
The descendant of that scale is on the oxo dot com website, with a slightly fancier control panel, and now it wants 4 AAA batteries (the new one uses a backlight and/or LEDs rather than the basic LCD). Both use membrane switches, which have proven to be Reliable Enough(tm), getting used daily at least.
Cost is $33 or so. IIRC, I got my at the Kroger affiliate, but the supply chain blues have been mucking things up. I want a backup safe-edge can opener, but it’s not at the store. Sigh.
I see WordPress has “improved” things again. WordPress Delenda Est, or WPDE!
The replacement scale turns out to eat its lithium cell within a matter of days, so the story continues.
As for WordPress, yeah, all the links now take you directly to that site and leave this one behind. It used to be a single “Open in new tab” click while setting the link, but it’s now an editing setting and life is too short for that.
[…] pondering what to do with the shattered kitchen scale, I got a bottom-dollar replacement touting its rechargeable lithium battery. After giving it the […]