Ground Loop

+1 to what RiggerJJ said. You wouldn't think lube would make a difference, but it's huge. When I went from Hornady One-Shot aerosol to the Dillon spray grease, I knocked a good 4 to 5 thou off my headspace, and they were much more consistent. I keep the Hornady for pistol brass now, and grease up the .223s. As for the trimmer, I run everything through two toolheads.. the first one is fast.. just full-length-size and then trim. Then a tumble to remove the grease, then the second toolhead just has a decap pin to knock the media out of the flash hole. I don't even keep track of which brass has already been trimmed.. it's easier to just run it all through every time.

In a frenzy of 45 ACP reloading, I let my spent primer cup overfill. Apparently, this causes the primers to back up into Station 1, and lifts the Station 1 locator out of position. Not sure what happened next, but I managed to crush the 'rails' in the Station 1 locator. They're pretty tweaked, and even after I bent them back into shape, they are catching the brass cases and not sliding them firmly into the shellplate. Anyone have this happen? Are these locators repairable with a file and some careful work, or is it a $15+9 mistake? Time to replace the primer cup with a tube + can solution, as others have done..

If you think they're sticking in the loading tubes, wait until they start sticking in the magazine. I have one lot of Wolf LP that seems to be pushing spec diameter or something.

For each caliber, I keep a tupperware bin of "primed" cases. It takes a long time to fill. (When it's full, I remove the decapping stem and run them through like normal.) Any time I get a real jam or some odd mixup, I don't think much about it.. I pull the pins and clear the whole machine. If there's powder in one or two of the cases, well, that's a great time to do a spot-check on charge weight and dump them on the scale. Now that the machine is clear, I put any loaded ammo (1 or 2 rounds) back into the seating station (to make sure they're seated and crimped) and then it's back to normal. I find that having one single process for clearing a jam keeps me from having to overthink it. "Did the shellplate advance? Is it fully seated? Did this one spill?" Doesn't matter.. clear it quickly, start from Position 1.

I'm with Mark K.. I keep my garage clean, and haven't found the separator to be a problem. I turn it slowly, so as to maximize actual tumbling. Very little media flings out, and it's actually only when I'm pouring the load in. Call me weird, but I wear my hearing protection.. brass is loud when you're doing it right.

Excellent! I'm excited to hear about this development. I've been using the UniqueTek kit to tap/heli-coil each of my toolheads. This cuts down on the thunking around, and gets my seating depth a little more regular. But it doesn't solve the larger issues of variation or die placement.

Did the price just jump from $274.95 to $294.95? Yow.. I guess it's good to see something in this economy going up.

I've had them not just break, but shatter.. the whole corner of the box reduced to shards and bits. Looking over my old (lightblue) cases, many of them are chipped around the lip and corners. Hasn't kept them from working. I'll see how these new ones work out. Midway / Frankford Arsenal still has cheap translucent ones if you really want 'em.

I've been waffling around, and the end-of-year price jump was reason enough to get in. Like it so far! I use 55gr FMJBT bullets, and the lack of inside chamfer didn't bother them at all. Just don't get your fingers pinched against the brass mount while seating. It's sharp now!

Holy necropost 2005?! That said, the issue is still the same as always.. the one-size-fits-none vac fitting on the Trimmer is still there. I used a large "barbed" PVC fitting and shoved it in. The other end goes over a vac hose extension which I hit with the hot-air gun until it was soft enough to force over the PVC. It works. Now I have to wear hearing protection, but if it lets me trim 1,000 pieces in an evening, I'll dig out the Peltors!

The newest 10mm/40/44 bulk ammo boxes I've received are opaque blue, and not semi-transparent light blue like the previous ones. Size and shape seem the same. I can't call this an improvement.. it was nice to be able to see through the box at how full they were, or if they were empty, even if they were stacked up. The new plastic feels different, more pliable, like it might be less prone to cracking and chipping.

Excellent. I thought those were motor brushes I saw on there. If the motor doesn't mind the heat, I don't mind. Any advice on trim time? Can we rock at full casefeeder speed, or does it need one-onethousand two-onethousand time to work its magic? Seems like a pretty high speed cutter.

Just a quick check to see if it's normal for my new Dillon "Rapid Trim 1200B Case Trimmer" to run so hot. After 45 minutes or so of continuous use, I'm measuring 165F temperatures on the motor body. It's hot enough you wouldn't want to touch it. I'm running a (noisy) shop vac the whole time, but that's not for motor cooling, of course. Seems to run fine, but at those temps, I'm worried about longevity. I'm trimming .223, using a dedicated size/trim toolhead. I'm going about as fast as the Casefeeder will go. As an aside, it's not clear that there's enough air travel to suck the brass out of the cases. I'm finding several cases with brass shavings down inside them. Is the vacuum supposed to clear all the chips, or should I be tapping these cases out? Last, is there a required "hang time" on this trimmer? Can I just feed cases through as fast as possible and trust the high-speed motor will get a fair pass over them, or should I slow it down and give it time at the top of stroke?

It's not the shell plate I'm worried about, but the case rims, of course. That said, I've seen what it takes to rip the rim off a .223 (stuck in the size die), and it's not a small amount of force. Maybe with the right taper, a swaging punch could be used with only rim support? Does any other press/contraption do this? (swage with only a shellplate hold) The Super Swage doesn't feel like much force, but it has a very magnified cam action, so it could be deceiving.

For the top support, I'm thinking of a die like a Universal Decapping die, only with a stouter post and thick "pin" to sit against the flash hole. Only then it's at the wrong end of the stroke. Hm...