Sparky_NY

The metal hub in the center of the case wheel is a clutch. Tighten the screws a bit. It is there so a complete jam-up does not do damage. I believe that is covered in the instructions. Every press has a learning curve. I set up the case feeder and press by the instructions and it works well. A friend bought one a year later and also had no problems.

Don't know how many you mean by "just a few" primers but it can get iffy feeding if there is less than 10. Many people put a plastic rod, wood dowel etc. in the tube to keep down pressure on the stack. (I do)

For those interested: I checked the shell plates today. They are surface hardened. A file won't touch them but they only measure 33 Rockwell on a hardness tester. I assume they have a surface hardening maybe .020 thick with a soft core underneath. Info for those considering modifying their own to the new style.

I've had the press for about 3 years and love it, EXCEPT for that ejector wire. Its great to see they came up with a fix. I have been reading up about the ezject system on the net in detail. As for retrofitting older presses, the info I found was you can send them your press, a $100 bill and they will retrofit it. The shellplates are different also, identical except for a groove on the bottom around the perimeter to allow clearance for the new ejection finger. They will exchange 2 shellplates for $10, the rest you have to pay full shot. They will not sell just the new cast plate so you can install it yourself. Now.... Having studied the new system, and having a lathe and cnc mill in my garage (more toys), I plan on retrofitting the press myself. The old shellplates are hardened so cutting that groove on the bottom may be tricky but I am pretty sure a carbide cutter will do it using care. I plan on milling out a recessed pocket in the baseplate and making a insert with the ejection finger that fits that pocket and attaches with one countersunk screw. Saves the shipping cost, the $100 bill, and makes the old shellplates useable. There are pics of the new system and shellplates on the hornady website.

There are other threads here on this very subject. I use the Lee FCD in station 5. The trick is to grind a flat on the bottom of the FCD where the ejector wire resides. Don't grind all the way to the carbide ring though or that ring will crack, you have to leave a little steel but not much. The ejector spring still needs to be tweaked for clearance. I find that shortening the ejector wire, the flat area where the attachment screw hold it under the shell plate, until the vertical part is up close to the extended part of the casting where the casings feed in. You may also have to tweak the loop end at the center bolt a tad but don't bend the wire in the straight area where it crosses the shell plate, that just screws things up I found. Doing this stuff, it can be made to work quite well. I didn't see what it is you don't like about the case feeder, maybe you can give more details.

I have all 3, lathe , mill and LNL press thats picky about ejecting.

I have owned the Pro1000 first, then the loadmaster. The loadmaster is worth the extra money BUT all the lee presses are a pain. Last year I upgraded to a Hornady LNL progressive and it has made life much easier. The most I could get from the lee presses was 200-300 per hour because of the constant fiddling required. I have hundreds of rounds that need to be pulled apart also from my days with the lee presses. Give some consideration to the Hornady LNL progressive, its a little more than the Lee but a lot less aggrivation plus you can later add the case feeder and other goodies as money permits. The Lees worked, but I would never recommend them to anyone.

Nice !! "They" say its good practice to occasionally clean the inside of primer tubes to remove residue. Your killing two birds with one stone. Dowels as small as 1/8 are hard to find. Hobby shops are the best source. I also found too heavy a rod would hinder feeding. Also at hobby shops are brass tubes which I bought in 3ft lengths, cut into 3 pieces, make a small slit at the end with a dremel cutoff wheel, squeeqe slightly, drill a tiny hole at the other end and you have primer pickup tubes for under a buck each. The small clips to hold/release the primers are the same exact thing as the pins used to hold R/C car bodies in place. I now have a dozen tubes each for small and large.

We are talking a 1/8" dowel here, about a foot long. The weight difference is a joke. In fact, it would not surprise me if plastic was heavier. The reason the "engineers" used the plastic piece was no doubt so it could be injection molded with the knob on the end. We are talking about the weight of 5 round toothpicks here ! LOL

I have a Hornady LNL progressive. I put a dillon powder checker on it and the primer warning buzzer. They were very simple to install, nearly a bolt on. For the powder checker I had to drill a hole in the toolhead for the actuator rod to touch the shellplate but it was very easy to do. As a alternative, a small wooden dowel inserted into the primer tube provides a easy visual indication of how many primers are left. (my prior method).

The collator portion of the system is a dream come true, the only shortcoming seems to be at the press end. A lot of guys (me included) are not going to be crazy of the idea of loosing one die location. The Lee Factory Crimp Die is extremely common for the last station, many swear by it, others will just not be willing to part with the powder checker. The ideal solution would be for the bullet feeder to accomplish the seating operation completely rather than just setting the bullet on top. Hopefully that is something that may still be getting worked out and may come in the future. It would also eliminate the need for the "over" expanding of the case neck so the bullet does not fall off when indexing to the next position.

So, 40 & 45 are two different setups / kits?

Brings to mind a couple questions.... is the drop tube spring the same for all calibers? What about the hockey puck flipper? What does a caliber change kit include.

The flare isn't as big as it looks and is needed for the bullet to remain in place when the shellplate rotates. The seating die irons out the flare nicely and I don't believe the neck is worked too hard. The flash was off. Again, thanks so much for taking the time to give us all the scoop and pictures, its much appreciated and well above the call of duty.

Wow, that one pic of the case with bullet in the shellplate.... the case mouth bell looks the size of a trumpet !!!!! PS The problem with getting a good pic of the white hockey puck is the flash on the camera is wiping out all the detail. Try a pic or two with the flash off, a lot more detail should show.

Great pictures ! The bullet flipping is no longer magic. LOL Very clever design. They live up to their KISS name.

Thanks for the answer. I figured out it was the round white insert but you can't make out in any of the pictures any detail enough to "see" how it accomplishes the flip. I am real curious how it is accomplished. Also curious what goes on in the die for the press.... what stops the pile of bullets from falling out the bottom yet releases one at a time???? Love to see a close up pic of these two things.

There was a short answer to this question but it didn't help much. It appears from the video that "something" under the round plate does this function. I'd love to hear some one describe it better or post a pic of it. So far, no reports of upside down bullets so it must work very well.

Fiddled with the press more this afternoon, fixed the case feeder jams thanks to a post earlier in this thread. I worked on the ejector more. I had already ground off a flat on one side of the Lee FCD which aligns with the ejector wire giving more clearance. (die set for depth first without wire installed, then install wire and mark location on die where it touches). Looking over the die I noticed I could safely take a tiny bit more off for more clearance so I did that. I worked over the ejector wire similar to prior efforts.... shorten the section that goes under the plate at the clamp screw, this loves it in closer to the feeder V-block, then adjusted the loop end of the wire so it just clears the die ( critical). No other modifications to the ejector wire. Removing the additional material on the die made a substancial difference. The difference in jamming and smooth operation is less than 1/16 movement of the wire at the die. I loaded about 700-800 without much ejection problems but time will tell... I had it work before for short peroids, then the wire tension changes or gets roughed up and its back to square one. A note on removing material from the Lee FCD... I put a flat on the die, parallel to the ejector wire. Do not remove too much material from the die, a tiny bit has to be left to support the carbide sizing ring or the carbide ring will break. (been there done that) I am changing calibers now for the first time, to 45acp, hopefully they will feed and eject OK but I have faith they will. It appears the smaller diameter the case the more problems. A better ejector method is still needed, hopefully somebody will come up with a homebrewed modification. (like the case feeder jam fix)

YOU DID FIGURE OUT THE PROBLEM !!!! I tried your fix this afternoon and loaded 700-800 without a single jamup !!!!!! Well Done !!!! And thanks !!!

The half step advancing works just fine, no problem there. Surely a ejector design can be had that will work with the half steps, although it does not appear it will come from Hornady. Unfortunately people don't get to read that only Hornady Crimp dies will work in station#5 until they already own the press (and probably have it set up!) I believe (could be wrong) that this is the only press on the market that cannot use the Lee FCD,which is a very popular die! It is not uncommon for people to use other brand dies in their presses, I use a redding comp. seating die for example. I could use the hornady crimp die BUT it does full length size the completed round which is the main reason people use the Lee die in the first place. I use a powder checker and redding comp seat die so that leaves out the option of only using it as a 4 station press. So, the manual states the problem exists with station #5, I just take that as a confirmation of bad engineering. You don't happen to work for Hornady do you? LOL

Well, I'll tell you what i did to get my ejector to work. Except in 9mm it really ins;t much of a problem for me. I experience much more pain and suffering from the occasional flipped primer in my primer tube. basically when they tell you to bend the wire to adjust it, they talk about opening and closing the "u" bit on the end. Which only lets you deal with it minorly, and at a point causes additional malfunctions due to it not pushing against the little retaining hat on the shellplate assembly to keep it in place. So this doesn't really work. What you need to do is put the proper curved bend in the middle so it pushes from a idfferent part of the case. (i.e. more towards the back). The ejector wire is pretty hard and springy, so this is not as easy as it sounds. I wound up using the same little jig i had made up to tune my 1911's extractor. to go alaong with it, you need to make sure the case to shell plate fit isn't too tight. This was a non-issue with .45 and .40, but with 9mm I had to take a little felt wheel on my dremel and some lee valley honing compound to it to stop it shooting loaded 9mm cartidges across the room. i might have an unaltered spare lying around. if i do i'll see if I cna get meaning ful comparison pictures. I understand what you mean, pushing from the rear of the case is what is needed. I have one major question though.... are you using a Lee FCD in station 5? That is when the plot really thickens, due to the die the wire has to be further back to clear the die housing. The factory eject wire works pretty decent if you don't use station 5. The factory wire passes right across the recess in the shellplate at station 5, hopefully Hornady fired the engineer that did this. In my searching the net on this problem I also found mention that the Hornady press indexes in half steps compared to other presses, that means the shell has to eject in half the rotation (movement)of other presses which complicates things even further.

Looking at it harshly, I say 90-95% is unacceptable, thats 5 jams in a hundred rounds. Lets say your gun functioned that way.... The whole idea of a progressive is to crank out a lot of rounds in short order with minimum motions. Things such as pushing the rounds out by hand, constantly tweaking ejection wires, going extra slow through the ejection area of the stroke etc. all defeat the purpose of a progressive. Its kind of like having a STI that jams frequently but still puts rounds downrange. What is the "failure" rate for the other stations.... priming, sizing, powder..... 1 failure per thousand would be high!!! The press works great, except for one or two areas. I agree this works and I originally had my press tuned to work well with 9mm, but for those using a Lee FCD, adjusting the ejector so close to the case in position 5 simply is not possible. After some thought about something someone said earlier in this post, I have an idea I want to try out regarding case ejection. I'll let you all know how it works out when i get time to try it out. Come on... don't tease.... what are you thinking of trying? I go back to the first few posts that say a redesign of the ejector is the only real answer. Any ideas??? I studied the ejector wire for a bit, the problem I see is it pushes the case from the side causing jams against the side of the shellplate. I believe the answer is to PULL the case out from the rear of the case, straight out the slot. I have not come up with a idea for the mechanics to accomplish this yet however. I have a lathe, mill, welding equip. etc. in the garage so making some parts would not be a problem. Where is a good mechanical engineer when you need one? LOL

I didn't even mention the other problems with the case feeder but had several initially that I overcame. Talking to Hornady, they told me the .40 is a tough one, its not large pistol nor small pistol, its right in the middle, just like you experienced. First problem, the small pistol disk for the feeder wasn't picking up cases, it would run and run and run only dropping the occasional cartridge. I bought a large pistol disk. The large one didn't work well either, it picked up cases but dropped lots rim first and jammed easier. My solution was to make a "medium pistol" disk. I took the small disk and opened each slot with a end mill to a size in between the large and small sizes. That fixed that problem. Next problem, the long plastic tube would jam up. The cases would stick because of too little clearance. I had some of the old plastic tubes from my Lee bullet feeder laying around which where again just in between the large and small sizes. I took a reamer and opened the aluminum parts at each end of the tube to accomidate the new plastic tube. This cured that problem. On using Hornady dies.... I realize you can (must) do that in station 5 BUT myself and many others love the Lee FCD die and really want to use that die. I started with that die when having problems with 45 ammo and it cured by feed problems 100% ever since. The reason I use the die is because it sizes the completed round, sort like gauging every round . I think I would rather switch presses than give up using the FCD die. Oh yea..... another mod I made.... I adapted a Dillion powder checker to the press. It was pretty easy. I like the idea of the Dillon checker being audible, one less thing to watch.

Called Hornady today about the ejector wire ongoing problems and as expected the rep claimed they don't get many calls on the problem, he says he just "opens up the loop" on his and it runs fine. I inquired if there were any fixes likely in the future and of course he did not know of any in the works. As expected, Hornady denies there is a real ongoing problem so we are stuck with this lousy case ejector unless we come up with something on own own. (or just get rid of the press and go blue) I have also had problems with the power case feeder jamming in the funnel area and raining .40 cases frequently. Again, no suggestions yet alone solutions. I bought this press as a replacement for my Lee Loadmaster. I got sick and tired of the Lee malfunctioning somewhere every 30-50 rounds. You constantly had to stop and tweak something on the press, the result was a VERY slow round count per hour. The Hornady LNL progressive has turned out to be no better in this respect. I get about 300-400 a hour when it is working at its best. Think this thing is headed for ebay...... LOL