skhanna

I loosened the two screws way out so that the collar was completely away from the die when I seated it, then tightened it back down (finger-tight).

I went back to the beginning of the powder measure setup, the die needed to be screwed nearly all the way down (within a quarter inch of remaining threads) before the powder measure run the complete travel. I adjusted it carefully to right about where it made full travel, then tightened the die nut. At this point, when I ran a casing through it, the primer seated perfectly and the case went up and came back down without fuss, but it had too much flare/belling on it. So I loosened the nut on the primer die, and turned it to raise it back up about a 16th of a turn, and put another case through it. This time the flare/belling was twice as much as before. I thought, maybe it needed to seat/settle in, so I tried another, same thing. So I loosened the nut again, turned it to raise the die another 16th, and this time the casing was completely stuck. When I finally got the lever back up again, lowering the shell plate and the casing, the casing was radically flared, the top was shaved half off, and my fun-meter was about pegged out. So my question is... apparently, raising the powder die (so that the powder drop sits higher off the top of the toolhead) causes MORE flare/belling, not less? That seems counter-intuitive, but if you guys confirm it, I'll adjust in the other direction.

I only lubed the inside of the case because I had gotten a previous case stuck on the funnel and I was hoping that if it happened again during the setup process, that might make it easier to extract.

Thanks for the encouragement, patience is definitely a virtue with this. I'll check the pictures, maybe that's it. For the most part, the Dillion videos seem pretty straight-forward, but it does sometimes shows the press from reverse angles, that's thrown me off before.

Thanks for writing all that out, I'll go through it again this evening and post the result here.

Thanks guys, I only have one funnel, the one that came with this setup, but I'll double-check it.

I'm new to reloading, and after doing my research on the various reloading presses available (Lee, Hornady, etc), I decided to go with the Dillon XL650 with the .45ACP die set. I bought it through BrianEnos.com, it arrived, I set it up, everything was moving right along. I followed the setup video and the first round seemed to go ok except that I had an inconsistent primer seating. I think I got that sussed out, but when it was time to check the powder drop, every powder drop was slightly different. I called Dillon and they told me to tighten up the rod that runs to the powder measure and that seemed to help. I ran some shells through with mixxed results; some of the shells had seated primers, some didn't (resulting in powder scattered around the press), and the flare wasn't wide enough so it was carving into the copper sheathing on the bullets. What a mess. Back to the drawing board. I watched a youTube video on setting the 650 dies and it explained how to set the powder die correctly so that I got the correct amount of flare. Worked beautifully, but with the die set at that level, the powder measure doesn't operate. The powder measure needs to be a lot lower. But if I lower the powder measure, just far enough so that it fully operates, the way it's shown in the installation video, now the cartidges are way over-flared, ruined, and really really tough to get back out of the press (and they were lubed) because they're jammed so far up onto the funnel. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.