Platform Scales

Guardian Lite is the least expensive complete scale: 5,000 lb, with the NEMA 12 G-500E readout, for dry areas. Guardian Premium is where the 10,000 lb capacity starts, and its G-700K readout is sealed to IP69K for areas that get hosed down. Premium Wireless is the Premium with the floor cable replaced by an RF link. Platform-Only is the Premium deck sold without a readout, and Guardian 1.0 is the previous generation, kept orderable to match installations already on the floor.

Platform-Only is not the cheap option. At $1,475 it costs more than a complete Lite, because it is the 10,000 lb Premium deck sold without a readout, while Lite is a 5,000 lb scale with its indicator included. Buy it when you already have an indicator worth keeping, not to save money on a first scale.

Guardian 1.0 deserves the same honesty: it is still supported, but the current Guardian is the better scale for the money unless you are matching an existing installation.

Capacity is the easy half: 5,000 lb on every trim, 10,000 lb on Premium, Wireless and Platform-Only. Pick the one that clears your heaviest load with room to spare and move on.

The harder truth is that steady weight is not what wears a floor scale out. A pallet jack setting a load down hard puts several times the nameplate into one corner for a fraction of a second, and that impact, repeated all day, is what a platform has to be built around. The Guardian's ratings state it plainly: on the 5,000 lb platform, 7,500 lb of shock on a corner and 15,000 lb on an edge, because the edge is where a jack lands first. The welded channel undercarriage absorbs that hit so it never reaches the load cells, and the failure it prevents is a permanent zero shift, which is how a hard overload actually kills a scale.

Deck size is set by the load's footprint and the approach. 4 × 4 ft and 5 × 5 ft are available across the current trims, with 4 × 5 ft on Premium Wireless and Guardian 1.0. The whole load has to land inside the deck edges for the reading to mean anything, so size to the pallet overhang, not the pallet.

The deck shrugs off the environment. The indicator does not, which is why the readout is the axis the whole lineup turns on.

Standard means the G-500E, a NEMA 12 enclosure: protected against dust and dripping liquids indoors, right for a dry warehouse or shipping area. Washdown means the G-700K, sealed to IP69K, the rating that covers high-pressure, high-temperature hose-down, which is what a food or chemical plant sanitation shift actually does to equipment.

Wireless keeps the IP69K readout and replaces the cable between platform and indicator with an RF link. The cable it removes is the one that runs across the floor: no conduit, no trench, no cable for a forklift to find. On the 4 × 5 ft deck the wireless readout is the TI-500 RF; on the others it is the G-700K RF.

None means Platform-Only. The platform presents a summed load cell bridge, so most NTEP indicators will read it after calibration. For legal-for-trade use, the indicator needs its own NTEP certificate: the Guardian platform is certified on its own, under CC 06-084, for use with any certified, compatible indicator.

If the weight is the basis of a commercial transaction, the scale has to be a certified device. Guardian is NTEP certified under Certificate of Conformance 06-084 and complies with NIST Handbook 44 as a Class III device, the accuracy class Handbook 44 assigns to commercial industrial scales.

Two things about that certificate are worth knowing before you order. It covers the platform, up to 5,000 divisions, for use with any NTEP-certified, compatible indicator, which is what keeps a Platform-Only deck legal for trade once it is paired with one. And certification is not permission: the finished installation still has to be placed into service and sealed by your local weights and measures authority before it can charge anyone by weight.

If the scale only feeds your own process and never sets a price, none of this applies, and any trim configured any way is fine.

A forklift drives straight onto the deck and the diamond tread is there so its tires grip it wet. A pallet jack is a different story: it cannot climb the deck height, so it needs either ramps or a pit frame that sets the deck flush with the floor. Ramps eat floor space on two sides; a pit means concrete work and a contractor, and it is the right answer when the scale is permanent and the traffic is constant. Guardian ramps come in 4 × 3, 4 × 4 and 5 × 4 ft and are ordered with the scale; pit frames are a special order.

If neither is practical, the honest answer is a different product: portable weigh beams sit at floor level, straddle the load, and need no ramps and no civil work at all.

The last part of the same question is the floor itself. The adjustable ball-foot feet exist because real warehouse floors are not flat, and a platform that is not sitting on all four feet is not accurate no matter what the load cells cost. Level the scale at installation and check it whenever it moves.