The progress in development of the Planck-Balance 2 (PB2): A tabletop Kibble balance for the mass calibration of E2 class weights

Abstract

Abstract In this paper we present the progress in development of a table-top version of the Kibble balance under the name Planck-Balance 2 (PB2). The PB2 is developed as a collaboration effort between the Technische Universität Ilmenau (TU Ilmenau) and Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) aiming for automatized mass calibration of the set of weights in the range from 1 mg to 100 g within the required uncertainties as stated by OIML recommendation R111 for weights of E2 class. We describe the design and the operational performance of the PB2 system in detail, the results of rigorous investigations of the error sources and subsequent improvements made since the beginning of the project in early 2017, the measurement data with the corresponding relative uncertainties and the preliminarily obtained uncertainty budget.