Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'lnl ap'.
Found 2 results
-
I am finding that straight wall pistol cases struggle to be aligned correctly with the sizing die on my LnL AP. The cases will tip directly away from the center of the shell plate. Most times (90% or more) the case will find it's way into the sizing die even though it's out of line a little. It usually isn't a problem with 45 ACP and 9mm because of how short those cases are, relatively. However, even these cases are titling, it's just not enough to cause a problem. It's much more common with 357 magnum, being a longer case. If the case tips too much, the mouth catches on the sizing die and won't proceed without being manually adjusted. Before anyone says it, I am 99% sure this is *not* an indexing problem. The shellplate is slotting into its detentes positively and staying there. Further, if it were an indexing issue, the cases would be impacting the mouth of the die either because the case was arriving too soon (impacting the side of the die closest to the left side of the press) or would be arriving too late, and impacting the side of the die closest to the right side of the press. That's not what's happening. The left/right alignment is correct on the case. The cases are visibly tilting away of the center of the shellplate. Hornady suggested stretching the case retainer spring a bit, on the idea that it's too tight. I will try that (haven't gotten to it yet) but wanted to know if others have had this issue? -
Often times, 223 cases will fall onto the shell plate when ejecting instead of falling into the cartridge bin. I've recorded a video to demonstrate what's happening. Apologies for the quality, it's a cell phone video and I didn't have a stand for the phone. Seen here: Video What I have tried so far: 1) Thoroughly cleaned everything on the subplate and the shell plate. Relubricated bottom of shell plate lightly. 2) Replaced case retainer spring (the one I had was worn out anyway). 3) Paid special attention to the ejector itself when cleaning. 4) Ensured shell plate was tightened down (I've never found Hornady's instruction to finger tighten only to be wise). I was having somewhat worse issues before replacing the case retention spring. The spring had a kink in it, and ejection from the slot where the spring's kink was was consistently worse. Replacing the spring hasn't fully solved the issue, but has reduced the rate of failure a little. I would say ejection failure runs between 10 and 20 percent. Usually once per full shellplate, sometimes twice. I don't think there is necessarily one bad slot on the shell plate. I have noted that the slots one and two positions counter clockwise from the shell plate number imprinted on the plate seem to be slightly worse. However, these don't fail *every* time, and ejection failures can happen on any slot in the shell plate. It's just that those two seem every so slightly more likely to choke. The press also generates a number of "near failures" where you can tell by the way the cartridge falls it almost fell the wrong way. I do not have this problem with 9mm or 45 ACP. I do have ejection issues with 357 magnum, but they are of a different nature: sometimes the shell plate gets stuck trying to eject a finished 357 cartridge. It looks like the rim sometimes rides over the ejector instead of being pushed out, but I'll try to fix that later, I only care about getting ejection on my 223 cartridges working right now. I checked my ejector for rounding off. Sometimes on Hornady presses the ejector can round off and cause issues, but mine does not look rounded off. Hard to get a photo that's in focus at that angle, this is just me getting down to eye level with the sub plate and eyeballing it.