The damped load cell is a combination of a damper and a load cell, usually in an integrated physical package, giving the benefit of fast settling time with a significant reduction in the ringing that is usually associated with low stiffness load cells.
These properties make the damped load cell suitable for high speed weighing applications such as checkweighing (end of process package weighing) and multi-head weighing (fruit and vegetable packaging machinery).
The damped load cell is usually made from a bending beam load cell that often takes the form of a dual cantilever design. This gives additional benefits due to the important properties of moment insensitivity.
This property is sometimes known as "off-centre loading" capability or "single-point" capability, and makes the load cell very useful for weighing platforms that are supported in the centre by one load cell only. Most retail scales (shop scales) are made by using this type of load cell.
The output of such load cells is usually in the region of 2 mV/V at full load, which makes them suitable for use with any of Mantracourt's strain gauge amplifiers, digitisers and controllers. However, for best results, it is necessary to use Mantracourt's high speed digitisers in order to make the best use of damped load cell in high speed weighing (or checkweighing) applications.