A Quick Guide to Scales Used in Clothing and Textile Industries

The textile industry involves the design and production of raw materials and fabric used to create products sold in the marketplace. Textiles must be accurately measured to ensure that the correct amount of material is produced for each product. Many tools are used for this purpose, ranging from sewing kits, thread and scissors used by tailors, to heavy-duty, textile production machines used in garment factories.

How are scales used in textile and clothing production?

Weighing scales are useful for a variety of applications related to the textile, retail and clothing industry, including clothes recycling collections to measuring specific amounts of thread for producing furniture and apparel. The law requires any retail textile business that sells fabric by weight to use a scale with appropriate trade certifications.

Types of textile and fabric scales

Many types of scales can be used to weigh fabric. Certain scales include unique features such as the ability to weigh thread in grams per square meter (commonly referred to as GSM scales). Some scales can perform checkweighing and counting tasks. And others simply include U.K. trade approvals for buying and selling clothing and fabric by weight.

Bench scales

Versatile and compact, bench scales offer a spectrum of features, including weighing, counting, checkweighing and percentage weighing. They’re ideal for measuring materials, products or tools and can be used to count sheets of paper, cloth and fabric. Trade-approved bench scales are commonly used in laundries and clothes recycling stores.

Platform scales

With a sizeable weighing platform, these scales are able to weigh larger objects or multiple items simultaneously. Platform floor scales can be used to checkweigh bulky bags of clothing or material that cannot fit on a benchtop scale.

Top-pan precision balances

Top-pan or top-loading balances offer high-precision weighing and a larger top plate than typical precision balance models. Analytical and precision balances offer thread measuring capability, delivering a high level of precision for weighing material.

Who uses clothing and textile scales?

Used clothing stores

Businesses that buy previously owned clothing by weight use trade-approved platform scales with a checkweighing function. This helps them determine the price they pay for clothes they receive from a seller. Large platforms are used when selling clothes by the kilo, and allow multiple bags to be weighed simultaneously.

Laundries

Laundry and dry-cleaning establishments use retail or laundry scales with price-computing features. This helps them determine the customer’s cost based on the weight of their laundry. Typical clients include businesses in the service industry, such as restaurants, spas and hotels.

Tailors/ wholesalers

Tailors rely on scales that can measure grams per square meter (GSM) to accurately gauge the proper amount of fabric when creating customised apparel. Wholesalers sell raw fabric in bundles or sheets using a counting or checkweighing scale that has the required trade approvals for selling products by weight.

How to choose the right scale for your needs

When you’re ready to purchase a textile and fabric scale, think about how the scale will be used. Take into consideration the cost and how it fits into your budget, along with the size and how much weighing capacity you will need. If you plan to buy and sell clothes or fabric by weight, you’ll need a trade-approved scale with a large weighing platform and enough capacity to accommodate multiple bundles of clothes simultaneously. If you own a laundrette, you’ll need a trade-approved bench or floor scale that lets you determine a price based on the weight of customers’ laundry. A tailor who needs to calculate thread weight in grams per square meter might not require a trade-certified scale.

Recommended textile scales

DS platform scale - Kern

Kern's DS platform scale is perfectly suited to weighing paper, fabric and lengths of string offering freely programmable weighing units such as g/m for the length of strings, density in g/cm³, and paper weights in g/m². This product is considered one of the best GSM scales on the market!

DS scales can be used for the determination of weight for paper or in the textile industry for the determination of the length of strings, along with standard parts counting and percentage weighing for warehouse procedures.

GFK floor checkweighing scale - Adam Equipment

Adam's GFK is a heavy-duty floor scales complete with parts counting and checkweighing applications. The GFK is well-suited for use in warehouse and factory environments and is often used to weigh larger, heavier amounts than standard benchtop scales.

The GFK is EC trade approved and can be used for weighing bulk fabrics, laundry and other materials to be purchased or sold on the basis of weight.

CKT bench checkweighing scale - Adam Equipment

A long-standing best selling product manufactured by Adam Equipment, the CKT bench checkweighing scale is a dependable, multi-purpose weighing scale well-suited to warehouse and inventory control tasks. The CKT can be operated from a worktop or workbench and offers reliable checkweighing, parts counting and percentage weighing applications. The scale comes complete with built-in checkweighing lights for accurately monitoring the weight of products prior to distribution.

The CKT makes an excellent laundry scale due to its compact design, simplicity, checkweighing applications and trade approvals necessary for selling bags of laundry by weight.