MilkMyDuds Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 I am having trouble to mount the dropper (top portion) of the Mr. Bullet Feeder on to my new XL650. As you can see in the attached pictures, the powder assembly is in the way, blocking the top portion of the MBF dropper to be properly inserted into the dropper die. Is this issue known? I can see a couple options but neither would work. Does anyone have a solution to this problem (other than returning the MBF)? 1. Rotate the powder assembly out of the way. I tried to rotate the powder assembly but found that the fail safe rod assembly is secured into the machine by 2 screws. As a result, it is not possible to rotate it, as you can see in the picture. 2. Use station #4 instead of #3. This means I will have to do seating/crimping together in station #5, which I won't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChuckS Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 Rotate the powder measure and put the failsafe rod in from the left instead of the right... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MilkMyDuds Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 (edited) Rotate the powder measure and put the failsafe rod in from the left instead of the right... Yeah I got it now. I will try. Thanks! Edited July 12, 2015 by MilkMyDuds Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Donald Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 One other tip, tie wrap the feed spring lightly to the top powder hopper. You want the spring vertical a bit over an inch above the feed die. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjacobs Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 yup your fail safe rod is in backwards anyway so good time to fix it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MilkMyDuds Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 Fail safe road on the left - works great now. Thanks everyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MilkMyDuds Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 One other tip, tie wrap the feed spring lightly to the top powder hopper. You want the spring vertical a bit over an inch above the feed die. Do you mean the tie in this picture? I wonder where to get that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarge Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 (edited) Yep, keep the powder measure away from the MBF dropper. If it touches AT ALL the MBF won't feed properly. Edited after being reminded that it drops all bullets instead of not feeding. I've never had either since I used the videos to set mine up from the beginning. Edited July 13, 2015 by Sarge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Donald Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 One other tip, tie wrap the feed spring lightly to the top powder hopper. You want the spring vertical a bit over an inch above the feed die. Do you mean the tie in this picture? I wonder where to get that... Like that, mine is just a tie wrap around the powder tube. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Donald Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 Yep, keep the powder measure away from the MBF dropper. If it touches AT ALL the MBF won't feed If anything touches the bullet dropper it creates issues dropping bullets. When I put my Mr. Bulletfeeder on I just installed the dropper and played with it a bit to understand exactly how it worked. The collator does take some patience and playing with to get it to drop all the bullets in the correct orientation. Every so often mine will drop a bullet upside down, I just watch for it and stop and flip around the bullet. Happens maybe once every 200 rds or so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MilkMyDuds Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 I finally tuned the collator to not drop bullets upside down. Tested for 200 rounds and worked fine. However, I am still having issues with the dropper. The dropper won't return down after seating 1 round, causing all the rest bullets in the dropper to flood down all at once. I took off the upper part where the wire and springs are attached, then the dropper would return down perfectly freely. It seems to me the tension caused by the stretched wire and spring is the reason. Even after I wrapped the spring to the powder tube, I am still seeing the wire causing too much tension. I wish MBF would just give us longer wire, instead of having it so short and over stretched causing the dropper not fall freely. Right now, I am considering putting in a post on the bench next to the press, for the sole purpose to tie both the wire and spring so that they won't cause tension to the dropper. Will post a pic after I am done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MilkMyDuds Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 Installed a pole on the bench, and tied the upper portion of the spring and wire so that the lower portions do not have any tension on the dropper. This helps a lot. The last issue I am trying to figure out, is why the dropper would stop after every 2-3 rounds pass through the switch. Is this normal? Do you all manually force the switch back into position every 2-3 rounds? This is very annoying. I wonder if there is a workaround. I thought the switch is only meant when there are too many bullets in the dropper, but the switch is definitely being pushed out a bit every round passing through it. Maybe it is too sensitive? Can it be tuned down? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjacobs Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 I use fishing line to tie up my dropper spring to keep the tension off of the dropper. Works well once I got it positioned exactly how I needed it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Donald Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 (edited) Installed a pole on the bench, and tied the upper portion of the spring and wire so that the lower portions do not have any tension on the dropper. This helps a lot. The last issue I am trying to figure out, is why the dropper would stop after every 2-3 rounds pass through the switch. Is this normal? Do you all manually force the switch back into position every 2-3 rounds? This is very annoying. I wonder if there is a workaround. I thought the switch is only meant when there are too many bullets in the dropper, but the switch is definitely being pushed out a bit every round passing through it. Maybe it is too sensitive? Can it be tuned down? Possibly a defective switch. I just just loaded 30 rds through mine and only issue was one bullet dropped upside down. When I tie wrapped my spring to the hopper, I only pulled the tie wrap until the spring was inline with the dropper. I did also stretch the feed spring slightly. Try getting hold of Rick he is RickRak2000 on the forum. Try e mailing him. He is very go to work with. Edited July 12, 2015 by The Donald Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polizei1 Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 (edited) As for the dropper die not resetting after seating the bullets, you need to lube the die assembly (the part that moves up and down when seating a bullet). That will allow the die assembly to freely fall back down and will prevent the other bullets from all dropping out. Second, you may need to manually bend the cut-off switch until it works with whatever bullets you're using. When I got my 300blk conversion mine didn't work either. Turned out the metal "arm" was sitting too far out and would not stop bullets from dropping. To fix this, I took a small flat head screw driver and "pushed" the metal arm back into the tube until it worked. Just play with it, you'll figure it out, it's not hard but does take a bit of time to setup, but once you do, it runs great. You also don't have to use a tie to hold up the drop spring, I load 9mm and 300blk and don't use it, mine works just fine. Also, do NOT tighten down the lock-ring on the die with a lot of force, I did that and broke mine! I just hand-tighten it down and then add a SMALL amount of extra pressure to it. The aluminum is thin! Edited July 13, 2015 by polizei1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MilkMyDuds Posted July 13, 2015 Author Share Posted July 13, 2015 Thanks for the advice. I bent the switch metal with hands until it would reset after each bullet passes through it. Now it works great! Now after loading 200 rounds for real, I did get upside down bullets a lot more often when I was just testing the bullet feeder alone. Not sure why. Seems the collator guide is very tricky to adjust (to avoid upside down bullets). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amokscience Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 I wrapped some lead around the dropper in addition to wrapping the spring to be more vertical (used a velcro strap). No more issues with bullets spilling out. The collator works perfectly for me with round nose bullets. With flat nose I get an upside down about once every 100 rounds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarge Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 I finally tuned the collator to not drop bullets upside down. Tested for 200 rounds and worked fine. However, I am still having issues with the dropper. The dropper won't return down after seating 1 round, causing all the rest bullets in the dropper to flood down all at once. I took off the upper part where the wire and springs are attached, then the dropper would return down perfectly freely. It seems to me the tension caused by the stretched wire and spring is the reason. Even after I wrapped the spring to the powder tube, I am still seeing the wire causing too much tension. I wish MBF would just give us longer wire, instead of having it so short and over stretched causing the dropper not fall freely. Right now, I am considering putting in a post on the bench next to the press, for the sole purpose to tie both the wire and spring so that they won't cause tension to the dropper. Will post a pic after I am done. Sounds like you need to stretch the spring slightly. It's probably holding the dropper up just a tad. The MBF is actually a better performing piece of equipment than my 650 itself. I don't understand at all the zip ties, etc. There are very good instructional videos on youtube by the man who designed and built them. They have been very helpful. BUT, I will agree that I get the odd random bullet that comes out upside down since switching to 115 JHP's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
echotango Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 (edited) I followed the instructions on their website. I do not use any zip ties or anything additional. Runs like a top. Pay attention to the 2 vids talking about the dropper and the collator. The bullet plates/spacer(the little adjustment plate) on the collator are key on the upside down bullet issue. I'm using MG 115gr jhp. Edited July 13, 2015 by echotango Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MilkMyDuds Posted July 13, 2015 Author Share Posted July 13, 2015 (edited) I followed the instructions on their website. I do not use any zip ties or anything additional. Runs like a top. Pay attention to the 2 vids talking about the dropper and the collator. The bullet plates/spacer(the little adjustment plate) on the collator are key on the upside down bullet issue. I'm using MG 115gr jhp. The videos on MBF web site (youtube too) are all using old style XL650. The new style (mine is few days old) has the case feeder located further to the left. Now if you attach the MBF to the left of the already very left case feeder's left edge, the stretch going from the left most position to station #3 is much more than it used to be. I think it's time for MBF to update their wire & spring length for the newer style 650. Edited July 13, 2015 by MilkMyDuds Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarge Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 I followed the instructions on their website. I do not use any zip ties or anything additional. Runs like a top. Pay attention to the 2 vids talking about the dropper and the collator. The bullet plates/spacer(the little adjustment plate) on the collator are key on the upside down bullet issue. I'm using MG 115gr jhp. The videos on MBF web site (youtube too) are all using old style XL650. The new style (mine is few days old) has the case feeder located further to the left. Now if you attach the MBF to the left of the already very left case feeder's left edge, the stretch going from the left most position to station #2 is much more than it used to be. I think it's time for MBF to update their wire & spring length for the newer style 650. Station 2 is powder and primer. Station 3 is MBF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MilkMyDuds Posted July 13, 2015 Author Share Posted July 13, 2015 I followed the instructions on their website. I do not use any zip ties or anything additional. Runs like a top. Pay attention to the 2 vids talking about the dropper and the collator. The bullet plates/spacer(the little adjustment plate) on the collator are key on the upside down bullet issue. I'm using MG 115gr jhp. The videos on MBF web site (youtube too) are all using old style XL650. The new style (mine is few days old) has the case feeder located further to the left. Now if you attach the MBF to the left of the already very left case feeder's left edge, the stretch going from the left most position to station #2 is much more than it used to be. I think it's time for MBF to update their wire & spring length for the newer style 650. Station 2 is powder and primer. Station 3 is MBF Yes I meant station #3 (thanks for the correction). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
echotango Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 (edited) My 650 is also the new style. Maybe bring it fwd a little. Edited July 13, 2015 by echotango Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polizei1 Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 In my experience, I had to add two of the black/white spacers for 9mm to feed correctly and prevent the upside-down bullets. If you haven't added the spaces yet, do it and see if that resolves the issue. The machine is an incredible design and once it's setup properly, runs like a sewing machine, I absolutely love it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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