Budget Reloader Casefeeder (Reviewed after 3k rounds)

[nitrohuck]

A couple of months ago I went in on a Dillon 650 and while I got almost all the bells and whistles, I opted out of their casefeeder.

I knew I WANTED a casefeeder, but I was a little turned off by the expensive initial price and the expensive aftermarket feed plates.

The Dillon was $218 + $45 each plate needed.

I went with the Budget Reloader casefeeder for about $180 delivered, and ready to load all three of my calibers (40SW/9mm/300BLK) with only a single feed plate needed.

People asked me to report back with my experiences, some of them thought it was a dumb idea for me to go with the budget reloader, some were more intrigued. Anyhow, this has been my experience:

After about 4000 loaded rounds (and I am about to go load another 1k tonight) I really am happy with this purchase. When loaded to the suggested capacities, it does just fine and I haven't experienced any upside down cases. When I overload it, cases will jam at the feed hole, which is easily fixed but even more easily avoided in the first place by keeping it at ~350 max cases.

When I called the guys at Budget Reloader to ask them if their "one does it all" feed plate would feed 300blk cases they said they weren't sure. I figured if it works for .223 it should probably be a decent bet they'd run 300blk as well. This assumption was correct and it has loaded about 1k rounds of 300blk with no upside down cases. The only thing that happens is a few cases out of every couple hundred will fall under the casefeed plate. This doesn't affect it really, but if you load 1k rounds you'll wanna remove the feed plate and recover the ten or so cases that will inevitably work their way underneath. I bet it wouldn't happen with .223 and I could probably even trim the feed plate spacer down a bit and solve the problem but I haven't tried yet and it's not a huge deal, but worth mentioning.

The feeling and appearance of it is definitely cheaper than the Dillon feeder, but not by much, and I pulled the motor apart and then put it back together wrong and inevitably had operational issues but that was obviously my fault, other than that I am honestly pretty satisfied with this purchase. Perhaps it can hold about 100 cases less than a Dillon,

I feel that in this case the savings did outweigh the seemingly non-existent drawbacks.

[natgas]

I've got well over 10,000 rounds on my two reloaders and they are still going strong. Neither has given me any issues regardless of caliber being loaded.

Glad you are happy as well.

[KDHOLLAND]

I have had good luck with mine as well somewhere around the 6000 mark. No upside down cases or have i had any under the shell plate.

[nitrohuck]

Well lo and behold I got an upside down case while loading last night. Oh well, spoke too soon haha.

The cases under the shel plate only happen with 300blk and it's most likely because I'm using the spacer meant for .233, if I were to cut down the spacer I bet id be fine

[agalindo]

I just got one and did 500 .223 without any issues. Haven't tried 9mm yet.

[CPar]

Thanks for updates, I'm considering one.

[AusPPC]

Nice to see a company challenging the OEM dominance in case collators!

Updown cases are most often caused by the case bouncing off the side of the funnel and flipping around, it's really the only way it can happen. You can verify this by trying to make a case flip manually using your fingers.

In my experience (on a Hornady collator) you can avoid this by adding a baffle or spacer to the window that causes the case to drop a little later, when it is directly above the centre of the funnel. As a result, the case will drop straight down, rather than bounce off the sides, and hence not have a chance to flip around and drop upside down.

[jkrispies]

Great thread! Please keep the long term reports coming in. Will this work on a 550, and if so has anybody tried it on one?

[imdamnedifido]

Hello

I recently purchased budget reloaders shell plate mount and bucket. the amount did not come as complete as I thought it would and I'm not sure that my motor is going to work correctly.if anyone could either send me or post some close up pictures of the motor, mount, and the inside of the bucket it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

[cjonwardell]

Hi Guys,

I received a Budget Reloader for Christmas and was able to spend the funds on the XL 650 in January. I've loaded about 200 .223 rounds through it and although I've got a few kinks to work out on the Dillon, I'm pretty happy. I've spent a little on the Uniquetek micrometer powder bar and the shellplate detente (sp?) ball and spring to help things along. Also the powder hopper plate that uniquetek makes (they're local to me, about 5 miles away which is nice!).

I had a friend come by Sunday and I showed him how the feeder and system worked but only had unprimed brass to feed (I normally prime in a bonanza primer as I like the feel I get from it) so I had to take the hopper off last night to dump the extra brass out. When I did, I noticed that there were 4 pieces under the plate. 2 primed and 2 unprimed. I'm fairly certain that this has been causing some issues with jamming and feeding, but time will tell if it continues. I'm writing due to the comments regarding the 300blk brass going under and the assumption that the 223 wouldn't - well, it does! I did remove the 4-5" clear plate as instructed (it's for pistol brass) and I may have to do some modifications to the unit to make it work 100%, but at this point I'm not ready to give up on it. I have not had an issue with the wingnut causing jamming as far as I know, but I have had to reach up and manually move the plate in the feeder to reset jams. No upside down cases so far!

As has been previously mentioned, and I agree, the Dillon feeder was just too rich for my blood. By the time all was purchased, the feeder would have been close to what I spent on the 650 (well not really, but too much anyway). I'm very happy with the 650 if only I could get the powder spillage under control!

Regarding the powder spilling, it is occurring after the case withdraws from the powder die, but BEFORE any indexing occurs. In my research so far, it appears that the powder bar isn't resetting completely due to the new "failsafe" system. I may do as others have recommended and put in an extra spring to assist with the reset, but don't want to modify any Dillon parts. Another option is to see if Dillon has any NOS parts from their original design and see if I can pick those up for testing.

I hope to be a regular contributor here and wish you all the best!

Chris Wardell

[nitrohuck]

Cheers Chris,

I'll soon be at the 10k mark for my machine, still happy with it also.

As with any "budget" equipment, the big question is do the savings outweigh the "downsides", and I'd say the answer is a definite "yes" as far as this casefeeder is concerned.

Plus the fact that it has a two year warranty, which is twice what Dillon offers for their casefeeders.

[Foxbat]

Cheers Chris,

I'll soon be at the 10k mark for my machine, still happy with it also.

As with any "budget" equipment, the big question is do the savings outweigh the "downsides", and I'd say the answer is a definite "yes" as far as this casefeeder is concerned.

Plus the fact that it has a two year warranty, which is twice what Dillon offers for their casefeeders.

Nothing against the Budget reloader (I know him personally very well, we used to shoot together, he is a nice guy), but regarding the Dillon warranty - I have five of them, total probably of 50-60 years between them, and had just one part replacement.