How to Use the Tare Feature

On Adam digital balances and scales, you’ll usually see a yellow button with a T symbol. That’s the tare feature, which resets the balance’s display to zero. This is useful to add ingredients together for recipes or weighing things in a container without having to manually subtract the weight.

1. Place the container or the first ingredient on the weighing pan.
2. Once the reading is displayed and the balance is stable, press the yellow tare button, which resets the scale to zero.
3. Repeat as many times as you need to.
4. When you remove all of the items from the pan, the balance will give you a negative figure, which would be the total weight of all the items that you have measured.

CKT displaying weight


Taring the weight


CKT is now displaying 0

Warning! Taring the scale does not mean the weight doesn’t count for the scale’s capacity. So if you tare 200g and the balance has a capacity of 1000g, you have 800g left before overloading the balance.

On mechanical scales, taring is a little different. Note: not all mechanical scales give you the option to tare weight. If they do, you will see a weight on a tare bar that slides left or right. It will look different from the sliding indicators used to measure things.

1. Place the container or the first ingredient on the weighing pan.
2. Slide the indicators across until you get a reading that is stable and accurate.
3. Slide the tare bar to the right to increase the tare weight, and to the left to reduce it. Do so until the scale shows zero.
4. Place the sample on the scale, and slide the indicators across until you get a stable reading.

Whether you use a digital or mechanical weighing device, once you’re done taring and measuring, be sure to reset the scale to zero. If you tare 200g, and take off the weight, the scale will display “-200g”, and will measure accordingly. So if you don’t zero the scale and place an item weighing 300g on the weighing pan, the scale will display “100g” because 300-200=100.