doublealpha

Stymie1200 - I never recommend spraying the primers with anything. I recommed spraying the box with silicone and then shaking the primers around in that box. I believe I also showed that clearly in the video posted. I think its great you reached out to Winchester for comment, but perhaps it would be more productive if you send them the link to the video I posted, so they could comment on what is actually proposed. Would they recommend putting anything on their primers? I am sure not. But the question that should be put to them is “do you think doing as shown in this video would lead to any issues with the primers function?” have a good one saul

HI All, My point is that we have all been lubing cases prior to reloading them for decades. Some use case lube, others use silicon or similar for this process. You must agree that some small amounts of this case treatment enters into the primer pocket, right? (assuming deprimed brass of course). So – my claim is that we have ALREADY been applying a little silicone to primers – without any ill affect. I therefore I don’t see what the concern is about. I don’t think a theoretical concern can be considered valid (in other words, it remains unfounded) until there is some case study to prove it. I am pleased to read there are no new concerns and all those using a V2 disk and lubing either their primers or PP parts are getting good performance. In reply to some other comment: If we were aware earlier regarding the sticky primer issue – we would have included this point and suggestion for treating primers or PP parts in all initial videos/ material. This was not being hid from anyone, just was not noticed for reasons already detailed. Happy reloading everyone. Saul

Because silicon spray has been used on brass for years during reloading (and other lubes), and I have never heard of a situation of “primer contamination” that prevents primers from functioning. it is unfounded, because no evidence has been presented to support it is even a theoretical real issue. Have you ever heard of a case in which a primer failed to work because it was treated in the way I proposed? I have not.

I fully understand. I have learnt long ago that you can please some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. Not every product can be right for everyone. Saul

We are starting assembly work on the next run now, and will commence shipping again in Europe around 3rd week of Feb. stock will be sent to the USA later in February, probably last week of the month. thanks saul

I’m not sure why anyone would assume this tiny amount of silicon could contaminate the priming compound?! This is unfounded. We all use case lube in much larger amounts, and don’t worry about that at all, since it is not an issue. Lubed cases loaded years ago function just fine. I know many reloaders that use silicon to lube cases too. I am not proposing we submerge the primers in silicon, although I don’t know if even that would stop them from going off. But certainly the technique that I showed, rolling them around in a cardboard box which has some silicon on it would not contaminate them, IMHO. And it does make a world of difference to function with sticky primers, as some here have already tested and attest to. Give it a try! Saul

as promised, here is the video showing the treatment I did to the Tacky primers to get them to feed well through the Primer Pro: Saul

Indeed, very little silicone gets onto the primers in this manner. It seems just enough to overcome the tackiness of the “production lube” that is already on some primers. the nice things is that it foregoes the need to clean the unit or take it apart. The primers themselves run some silicone into the tracks as they go through. I shot 500 rounds this weekend which were loaded this way, and all the primers went BANG as expected. I don’t think there is any issue at all. I’d like to hear what other’s find after giving this a try. I think it works great! Saul

Guys, For those experiencing slower than desired output rates with primers like the Winchester or some Eastern European brands, indeed polishing/cleaning the ramp and collator with Pledge, or another plastic cleaner or dry lube does work very well. however – I’d like to make another suggestion that I found worked great for me with very tacky Winchester primers we are testing with now: Without cleaning or lubing the Primer-Pro parts, I sprayed some Silicone spray into a cardboard box, and then shook the primers around in the box for a few seconds before placing them into the Primer Pro. This was hugely affective. I went from an output pace that looked like it would take 5 minutes, to a good rate of about 90 seconds… and I don’t think I would need to clean the Primer Pro at all. You can use a flat cardboard box, spray the silicon into it until the cardboard is a little saturated, and then shake even 1000 primers or more at once in the box, lightly coating them with some silicone. Then feed them into the primer pro as needed. It takes just a couple of seconds, and seem to really solve that tackiness issue many have been facing with some primer types. I expect it will also improve the way these primers feed through the reloading press’s primer mechanism and cut down on primer seating issues too. I will try to upload a video shortly. Have a good weekend all, Saul

It’s not hard to empty if you need it: lift the collator assembly up and off, turn it upside down over a tray and trap on the bottom of the primer disk while holding it at a 45 deg angle, the primers will slide back out of the slots, back into the open inverted bowl area and fall out into your awaiting tray. Its takes just seconds to do.

Yes, you are correct. The Primer Pro was never designed to be totally emptied. For best performance you need to keep the bowl filled with 200-400 primers.so put in 300-400, and top up another 100 with each 100 you feed out. that is how it was always designed to run, and will give you the best output speeds.

Slavex - exactly right. its important to do it just like this - as it’s the only way to ensure the magnet collar is at the correct height so that the top of the tube is pressed up against the bottom of the exit hole. this is explained in the manual as well as in online video.

Hooked, I know the last few primers out the collator sometimes do not go. But that was not really viewed as an issue, as the intention was to keep running the collator with primers in it – never running it empty. For best performance, load 300 primers and add 100 for each 100 you feed out. so you are always working in the 200-300 quantity in the bowl. That way output speeds are maximized. If you do have to empty the bowl completely, the last few may be slow to get out. often a primer will need another primer to ride up behind it to tap it through the slot (at the kink point), which is why when the bowl is empty some primers may remain in the disk going round and round. New primers loaded into the bowl will push them out. Saul

Hi Longhill, you should not need to shim those primers. we tested extensively with Fiocchi primers. try a little dry lube in the bowl.

HI Balakay I do believe the product is well engineered. In fact, I really believe it’s an ingenious design, one for which I cannot take much personal credit. It is mostly the brain-child of one of my engineering team. However, I am most proud of its design and being able to realize it into a Product at the Price point we have. And while there are a dozen or so people with issues on this thread – and I do take that seriously (as you can see) we have just over 1,000 units out there being used! The majority of those users are using it successfully. More than a few have emailed us to say so, or have left positive reviews on the product page. Some issues do exist, and greatly depend on the brand of primers in use. But most have found that the use of a little dry lube, or Pledge type cleaner solves any function/output issues. Saul

Hi ltdmastr, Yes, I assure you I am well aware that there are many kinds of plastics. I have been involved in plastic production for more than 20 years, since the days I used to work with BUL. We did not randomly choose the types of plastics used in the Primer Pro. In fact, there are three types of plastics being used in the product, and none of them were chosen for price consideration! They were all chosen in order to maximize performance and molding behaviors. These materials were chosen in consultations with our mould and plastics supplier, based on our requirements for tolerances and accuracy and warping issues. Are there other types of plastic we could try? Yes, for sure. slickness of the plastic was never a main requirement as this issue was not identified early on, as previously explained. We may look into experimenting with other plastics now, but I am doubtful the solution will ever be possible without using a cleaner/dry film protection layer. A tacky wet/sticky primer is always going to stick to some degree or another, it would seem, and in combination with its very light weight, this is an issue. and issue solved by some cleaner applied from time to time. Machining these parts from any kind of plastic or aluminum is no option. costs aside, the design does not lend itself to machining, due to sharp inner corners and lack of tool access in some places. Saul

Did you try to apply a plastic cleaner or dry lube in the disk? that seems to have solved the issue of primers not exiting the disk for every customer I had direct contact with about this issue! Have you tried this solution?

Hi all, I thank you for sharing your experiences and suggestions. We set out to design and manufacture an automated primer tube filler that could retail at $200 or less. Machining that, as some have suggested from steel or aluminium would lead to a product which would have to retail for at $750 or more. Our goal was to produce something affordable for most, not just for the well-off few. I am sorry if this has offended some. Calling a product cheap because it’s made of plastic is just not correct. Plastic is a material perfect for many applications, and this is certainly one of them. Yes, it is a mechanical device, but it is under not stress and applies no forces and there is no reason it cannot work perfectly made of plastics. And as some of you will now, this is not the fastest or cheapest way to make a product. In order to produce the Primer Pro at an affordable price, we invested over $70,000 in tooling. It would have been much cheaper to make a couple of hundred from machined aluminium and go to market for $750, but forgive me if that was not my goal. Many are quick to criticize, some without any knowledge about materials or product design and production processes. Yes – I admit the “tackiness” issue of some primers (which is really the only issue, other than the reserved primers solved by the V2 disk) was missed by us, and I apologize to all for that. But it was not due to lack of testing as some seem to think. In fact, ironically, it was due to very extensive testing!! You see, we had been testing designs of the Primer Pro and refining it for well over 6 months. And during this time, the many hundreds of primers, of several brands, we were testing with, were out in open bins, in the open air. As most of you will know – once you remove the primers from their boxes, its no simply thing to put them back…. So these primers, laying out in open bins for months – became totally dry. Some primers are tacky and sticky out of the box, but when you leave them out for a long time – they get dry. They then slide over the plastic surfaces without issue. That is why we missed the severity of this problem earlier on. But frankly, even if we had caught it – a cleaning from time to time with Pledge or some other plastic cleaner or dry lube makes this problem go away completely. To spend a minute or so to clean the unit every 2000 primers is hardly a big issue. It wont even be that often for most primers. And may need less cleaning over time as the protective layer of the cleaner sets in. I have no way of knowing if an aluminum surface would have functioned better. No one has ever tried to handle primers in this way on other surfaces. I have been in touch with a few dozen customers over the past weeks who were having issues, and almost all of them are reporting now perfect function when using disk V2 and some Pledge or other cleaner on the ramp and bowl. If anyone is having an issue – please try that. And of course, anyone who is unhappy with his primer Pro, or sees the occasional cleaning as a deal breaker, please feel free to return it and use any other solution. I guess we will not be able to satisfy all. As for myself and my design, we will continue to work hard to innovate and invest in producing products to better our shooting/reloading experience. I am sorry if we are not always able to satisfy everyone’s wishes and meet everyone’s expectations and material preferences. I do thank you for your feedback, both the positive and critical, Have a great weekend, Saul

Hi Guys, to those having output speed issues with the V2 disk, but have inverted primers with the V1 disk, there is one other fix you could try that a customer came up with for his primers ( believe they were winchester) as he was having that issue. What he did was used disk 2, but spaced the disks out a hair by introducing a spacer between them. this allowed him the benefit of the tighter "bend" format in the track V2 has, but with more space to get primers through faster. using the sticky part of a post-it cut into little squares, he placed those as shown in the picture and then assembled again. this spaces the timing disk up by about 0.05mm and can make all the difference for particular primers. you could use a small piece of tape, or a piece of a target patch just as well. a small increase in the gap will increase output speed! Note the position in the picture these stickers need to go! NOT further out on the height stap, as that area does not contact the Timing Disk. Give it a try if you are having issues with your primer of choice. Saul

Hi All, I am sorry to read some of the negative initial feedbacks here on this board. And of course we take all feedback seriously. But a bit a fairness would be appreciated too. Some comments like “I’m not even going to try mine” or that “primer dust accumulating after 2K primes is “a huge concern” are just plain unfair to the product. Primer dust accumulates whenever primers are handled. Anyone who has ever used a vibratory primer feeding solution has seen the yellow dust build up. It can be wiped away, and is no issue at all! our system certainly handles the primers less violently than they are handled in a steal vibratory bowl! Criticism regarding the first units not having serrations on the ramps is valid. Frankly we were not aware of the primer sticking issue when those units were shipped. And not for lack of testing, as some kind reviewer suggested. We fed through many tenths of thousands of primers on these systems during development, of various kinds (Fiochhi 223, rifle and pistol were our main test primers. But we also tested with CCI, Federal, Winchester SP, S&B rifle and pistol, Murom and Magtech. A couple of others too. Our mistake was that we fed the same primers through again and again, as we were not using the primers to load ammo, but just to test. The stickiness of the primers is gone after they are fed through the first time, so that issue was not realized as being a serious one. The primers tend to have this lube on them when they come out the box, but once they are out in the open, in trays, as we kept them, they are dry ,and don’t seem to stick. Now much of the issues described are due to this tackiness of the primers. And it is effectively resolved by using a plastic cleaner from time to time (maybe every 1000-1500 primers or so) just run a earbud dipped in some solvent down the ramp surface and the primers will run quickly again. Also through the output exit hole, as friction there will lead to primers wanted to turn sideways and possibly stick. Try this and you will see it works. Once we realized the issue, we serrated all the ramps in house and that helps a lot. That serration can easily be done later using pins as I demonstrated in a video. I am also prepared to send replacement ramps to customers who received the first batch without the serrations if they feel unwilling or unable to serrate their ramp, and if their chosen type of primer is problematic. That will take several weeks though, as a the moment all of the first production run has shipped, and new parts will not be in until mid Feb. Bear in mind please that close to 1,000 units of Primer Pro’s are now out there being used, and the majority of customers are extremely pleased with its function and are having few or no issues. We are receiving plenty of positive comments too, although those customers often tend to be less vocal online… Anyway, we stand by this product and it’s design. We know it works! Try the 2nd disk if the first produces less than perfect results. Try the cleaner on the ramp to prevent slow moving primers which do create issues, or follow my suggestion to serrate it. I will be at shot show the coming week, so will not be much available to respond for the next few days, but can be reached by email off our site. Sincerely, Saul kirsch Double-Alpha Academy

I found that one of the ways to overcome this is to move that email from the spam folder to the inbox so any future emails from the same email address will land there. Doesn't work 100% on all mail clients but worth a try. My 2 cents.

HI Guys, Just wanted to update those following this thread. So, the spacer idea worked, but we were not 100% happy with it. A thin spacer felt a little… flimsy and unprofessional. This product is important to us, and we really want it to be perfect. So we decided that rather than using a spacer, we would modify the Prime Disk itself. Our plastics factory really came through for us, did a priority modification to the tooling and we produced 3000 pcs of the modified disk. This eliminates the reversed primers! So these disks arrived yesterday, and today we shipped out several hundred of them to awaiting customers and dealers. Note that we are sending every customer a V2 disk, even though many will choose not to use it. The original V1 works great with most primers, but if you do have any upside-down primers, simply change to Disk v2. All next several hundred units will ship out with Disk V1 installed, but include Disk V2 in the box, so if needed, you will have it and it can easily be swapped out. To our north American customers – Alpha Dynamics will receive these disks next week and should start shipping out the back orders then. It will take a couple of weeks to get them all out, as more stock needs to be sent from DAA too. So that’s the update, and current status. Have a great weekend! Get out to the range if you can. Saul

Having watched Primer-Pro units fill many hundreds of primer tubes over the past few months, I feel very confident it will be! Saul

Hi Guys, Allow me to share some updates with you. Myself, the design and assembly team at DAA worked very hard on the Primer-Pro, and we truly believe in its design and ability to be the solution so many of us reloaders have been waiting for for years. We tested the design extensively, and run every unit for 5 tubes (feeding 500 primers) before shipping out. We were very confident the first few hundred units we shipped out were perfect. And believe me, we worked hard ( and I mean LOTS of effort and overtime) to get the units shipped out ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, the feedback we are getting from some users forces us to accept that there are issues we missed. It seem the primers we were testing with ( 3 brands) were not fully representative of the range of primer dimensions which are out there. This leads to some unacceptable upside-down primers getting through, due to the gap between the primer disk and timing disk being a hair too large for the smaller primers found in some brands, where the tolerances in primer height is greater than we expected or accounted for. And I FULLY agree that even ONE single upside down primer per tube is one too many! And we have done many runs here with our primers where 0/1000 upside-down were recorded. So, we have spent most of the past week working on this issue, and we believe we now have a good solution, which is an easy retro-fit to the units already out there and the new ones about to ship out. A laser cut spacer of 0.2mm can be fitted into the primer disk, and it effectively reduces the gap and eliminates those reverse primers. Also a coarser threaded screw for better assembly tension will be used. We have tested with 11 primer brands so far with perfect results. We are waiting on 2 more brands we have not yet tested with (including the magtech mentioned above) and will confirm with those too. Believe me, after all the R&D time, effort and money put into the Primer-Pro, we have no intention to allow this to be less than perfect! I urge any early adopters who already received their unit -if you are having any issues with reversed primers – email me at daa@doublealpha.biz so we can send you the spacer and screws. Please do that and allow us the chance to show you the product will work as advertised, rather than rushing to trash it on forum boards and SM. To all those waiting for delivery in the USA: We already shipped a few hundred units to the US, but I put a hold on distributing those last week, as soon as we became away of the issue discussed here. We want to ensure that no matter what primer you choose to use, the product functions perfectly. Resolving this issue in volume will take a couple of weeks, due to the holidays here in Europe. We need to purchase the material required for these spacers and laser cut them, then get them added to all units. This will cause a 2-3 week delay in delivery. I Sincerely apologize for that. If anyone prefers not to wait and wishes to cancel his order for a refund – that is surely possible. I thank you for taking the time to read this update, and I hope you will give us a little time to make sure this product lives up to the potential we know that it has. On behalf of all the hard working team at DAA, I wish you a healthy, happy and successful 2020! Saul Kirsch, Double-Alpha Academy

Hi Guys, Thanks for all the interest and excitement for this product. We have been crazy busy here getting these ready and shipping. The first 500 units have shipped out, and many have emailed us their positive reactions. There has been some negative feedback too though, which I want to get out in front of: The most common issue has been that primers are sliding slowly down the exit ramp. This is due to lube that remains from production on some types of primers, which makes them a little tacky…. This creates a function issue with the light sensor as well as the function of the exit hole. Primers, being very lightweight, require very little to make them stick… The solution – is to use a little cockpit spray (the kind of spray used to clean the inside plastic dashboard of your car) applied with a small swab (like an earbud) onto the exit ramp. This totally resolves this issue, and can be reapplied as needed. One other issue reported relates to some brands of primers which seem to be much shorter than the ones we tested, measuring as low as 2.90mm… (our tested primers all were in the range of 3.03-3.12mm). with those short primers, some upside-down primers seem to get through. We are testing and working on a solution for this now. Happy reloading everyone, and bests wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Saul Kirsch, DAA.