how many rounds do u do in our lnl per hour?

[hkguy]

i get 400+ an hour with 2 primer tubes, no case or bullet feeder. I can do this with both cals i reload, 9mm and .38 spl. I use dillon dies for both cals as well.

[Coleman]

I do about 400-600 in 30-45 minutes on a 650xl without bulletfeeder( I am waiting for it) by then i am ready for a break.

[ctay]

On my LNL the biggest problem I have is the powder drop. I never fully trust it which leads to checking rounds every 10 to 20. I end up producing about 100 - 200 rounds per hour which I feel is pretty slow. No case feeder or bullet feeder - I'm saving up for a 1050.

Something sounds awry here... the powder drop should be VERY reliable from my experience.

unfortunately mine is all over the place. I've cleaned and cleaned but it always seems to move. I've now taken to running a whole pound of powder through it first, then start loading. This gets it more stable but frankly I dont feel like I can trust even then... +- .2 to .3

[fritzthemoose]

500 without the bullet feeder, I use one primer tube stop fill it up dump it and fill it again, then next time just dump it. That is 9 mm speed, 38SC is a lot faster since the brass is always better as is 40 or 45.

These kinds of speeds can't happen with Lee dies, use Hornady or Dillon.

I have Hornady dies but my setup or better process is the worst imaginable. Sometimes I am not even getting into trible digits. Thats why I more or less stopped reloading except for competition (I am loading 9 Major). It is simply a pain in the ass to sit, worst case, 3 to 4 hours to have the rounds needed for a large match.

The only issue I had or have with 9 major is keeping the primer slide area clean of powder. Start by tightening the shell plate till it has a tiny bit of drag, this gets rid of the slinging. Make sure you press is indexing properly, if it isn't you have all kinds of issues, mine was out so bad the powder was missing the case. A 1/4 turn on one of the pawls and it was perfect, no primer seating issues no issues at all. Ok I get some brass rain from time to time, and so does the dillon xl650 case feeder. As with all 9 mm regardless of press you got to weed out those darn crimped primer cases. I will say that the XL650 is more impervious to powder slinging all over, however, it will succuum to it after a while then you have to disassembile it and clean it, lube it, and sacrafice a chicken on the bench then it runs again.

Getting right on the LNL takes some skill but once right it stays and just runs, the Dillon well I'm running out of chickens.

keeping the primer slide clean is one of the major issues but only one. but even if its clean at least one out of ten does not prime and for the rest its very hard work. Simply cant be avoided with the brass I am using unless I sort it upfront and then that takes ages. Worst brass in the world and then picked up from the range with most being 9 Major ones makes things hard

Is the primer in the slide when priming the 1 in 10 fails? If not when it happened to me I found it was the slide cam wire needed a little adjustment so the slide retracted further.

Its not the slide but the brass. Most people here use S&B round as they are the cheapest ones. So if you use range brass u end up with 90% S&B. They are a bitch when it comes to priming. Even worse are the S&B non-tox. Sometimes even impossible to get the primer in at all unless u use S&B primers. However, while the whole S&B round is the cheapest araound the S&B primers are so much more expansive than other ones so no one uses them. Only solution here might be a 1050 so that you can redo the primer hole but then again a 1050 would be an overkill.

Then there is other brass mainly from eastern Europe which is very cheap but very low quality too. LZ for example dont even fit into the shellplate around 50% of the time. The Hungarian MMS are similar bad.

[fritzthemoose]

keeping the primer slide clean is one of the major issues but only one. but even if its clean at least one out of ten does not prime and for the rest its very hard work. Simply cant be avoided with the brass I am using unless I sort it upfront and then that takes ages. Worst brass in the world and then picked up from the range with most being 9 Major ones makes things hard

I've found that like most things it is the prep that makes it go fast. If I sort brass and inspect it I can cull out all the bad cases before they become a problem at the press. To sort I just sit and watch TV with the wife with 5 buckets around me. Slowly but surely I fill up the buckets with sorted brass. In a two hour movie I can sort about 5 to 6K brass.

On my LNL the biggest problem I have is the powder drop. I never fully trust it which leads to checking rounds every 10 to 20. I end up producing about 100 - 200 rounds per hour which I feel is pretty slow. No case feeder or bullet feeder - I'm saving up for a 1050.

Yes sorting would help for sure but then again considering the time it takes it would not speed things up overall I guess

[Babaganoosh]

I found the powder measure to be scary accurate. When I first got it I was always double checking. It's hardly even .1 off.

To the person having an issue. Do you have the baffle in the powder tube? If so take the measure apart and look for manufacturing burrs. I found one on mine when I first got it. It was causing issues. Also make sure everything is tight on the powder measure. I didn't tighten the gnurled knob on the side of the measure once upon reassembly and drops weren't consistent.

Also make sure the measure is going thru a full cycle. You want to make sure the metering insert is moving up all the way to the top of the cutout during a stroke. Not until it hits but pretty far up.

Lastly, are you making sure to use the rotor and the pistol metering inserts on the powder measure. The rifle one isn't great for small charges. If all is kosher call hornady, you shouldn't be getting deviations like that.

Hope that helps a bit.

Edited May 18, 2012 by Babaganoosh

[lugnut]

Yeah, great point, the rifle insert will likely give more variation at the pistol loads we do.... check that.

[GForceLizard]

500 rounds per hour. I'm using the micrometer pistol insert in the powder rotor. Never an issue with the powder drop. I have a light mounted and look in every case before placing the bullet. It has the roller handle from Inline Fab.

[feederic]

Just straight loading I can do about 600-700 per hour, no feeders of any kind. Good lighting, good rhythm, a comfortable position, and some good music

I just bought a LNL bullet feeder, case feeder, ergo roller handle, and pistol micrometer. I'm ready to step it up!

[rpd]

Not counting brass prep I'm around 4-500 per hour for 9mm. I'm using a case feeder and poor man's bullet feeder (hornady bullet feeder die and plastic tubes full of bullets, no collator). It works for me until I can build or buy a collator.

I've found that my powder measure stays consistent throughout each session.

[Recoil45]

I'm never going for speed but I probably average 600 rds per hour on a 650 with a case feeder.

[echase1]

For me, it seems to depend on cal. My LnL seems to load 45 and 40 at around 300 to 350 rounds an hour and 9mm is a little slower and tends to require more adjustments. I would say that an honest 9mm average for me is 250.

[ben b.]

I have 5 primer pickup tubes, I start with those full and a full primer drop tube. I have a case feeder. I use a powder cop and don't want to give that up, so I hand feed bullets. My LnL AP runs pretty well.

I routinely can crank out pistol rounds at a rate of 100 in 6 minutes on the timer or so (5:40 to 6:20), which is an average full-cycle press operation about every 6 seconds and counts minor corrections along the way (i.e, case feed jam, hosing off spilled powder, dropping bullets, forgetting my name, whatever). That rate would extrapolate to about 1,000 rounds in an hour, which I have never done. Refilling the primer drop tube, refilling case hopper, dumping the finished ammo hopper, refilling primer pick-up tubes, stretching my back, case gaging, boxing ammo, etc slows things down, and I can do about 400 completely finished rounds loose-packed in a box in an hour or so if I am focused on time. If I have just switched calibers, it takes about 100-200 rds before everything is set-up correctly, sometimes longer. I can only stand to do about 1-2 hours of focused reloading before I want to quit, and sometimes just do 200 rounds, gage them, box them & turn off the lights. I tend to set up the press in a caliber and load until I am out of one of the components before switching.

[PopPop]

200-300 per hour, 9mm or 40 S&W, no feeders and all the primer tubes I need filled and ready. I could probably go faster but this speed works for me (kinda the same with my shooting).

[Boxer1]

I can do about 500-700 on my ammo plant depending on the cartridge without being too slow about primer loading.