Came into a Dillon D-terminator that doesn't seem to be in the books.

[TimV]

A friend of mine gave me a what I presume is an older D-terminator. No instructions of course and no calibration weight. I emailedDillon and true to form, the emailed me almost immediately instructions for several different scales and mailed me out a 50 gram weight which I received in just two days.

 

I started by trying to calibrate the scale but nothing was working per all the instructions they gave me. 

 

Basically this is what they sent me...

 

1 Turn scale on
2 Press zero button
3 Press and hold the CAL button. It should display 50 grams or 700 grains. Momentarily press CAL to toggle the calibration weight being used.
4 Press the OFF key once. The display should change to CAL 0
5 Set appropriate weight on platform
6 If the scale is OK, it will read CAL F in a few seconds. If it is bad, then it will not read at all or will display CAL E.

When I go through this procedure and do step 4, I did not see a "CAL 0", nor did I see a "CAL F" or a "CAL E". Quite accidentally, I tapped the ZERO button and all of sudden, just like that, it was working. I have no clue but the scale works great...but only if I tap ZERO instead of  OFF...

 

I have attached a picture of the scale for your enjoyment...is this a "one off" scale that Dillon sold at one time? I can find no pictures of anywhere on line.
 

Edited September 9, 2021 by TimV

[dannyd]

That thing was a 139.00 dollars back in 93 or 94; worked about half the time later Dillion replaced it with a updated model.  It didn’t work much better, so replaced it with a RCBS scale later.

[TimV]

Well it was free so nothing lost if it doesn't work but so far, once I figured how to calibrate the scale, it seems to be dead on. I took it to work yesterday where we have sets of calibrated weights in grains and grams. All the weights they had from <1 grain to 50 grams and the scale read perfectly. We'll see how it holds up over time.

[Intheshaw1]

I have 2 of those that came with used presses I've purchased and both have a tendency to drift on me. If I leave them on for more than a minute they can drift up to .2 or so. All I do is zero it out each time and I figured that works but it's in my head about the accuracy. Right now I'm only loading for 9mm so if it's off a little I'll still be ok.