Lee Auto Disk Pro Adjustable Charge Bar Problems

[clem]

I've been trying to use this with my Dillon to load .38 SPL and when trying to throw light charges of Bullseye, it will throw a lot of squib loads. There is something about the shape of the hole in the adjustable charge bar that makes it throw light charges a lot of the time. I was trying to throw 3.5 gr of Bullseye, but if I go up to say 5.0 gr, it works fine.

Anyone else had this problem? I use the Lee measure because I have a couple of Dillon 450's and don't like the manual measures.

[Miranda]

why am I laughing?

ok you want to put a red part on a blue machine?

the lee powder hopper/auto-disk should just thread into the standard hole.

and work....

what I don't know is what other parts will interfere with that simplicity.

miranda

[1911user]

Are you using a Lee powder-thru expander die or the dillon powder die? It should work fine with the Lee die. Are you getting full powder measure movement? If not, you may need to turn the die into the press a turn or 2 to get full charge bar movement and the right amount of case expansion.

[North]

The instructions say that it meters poorly with light loads, I think they list 4 rains as the minimum with the adjustable charge thingy. I could not get mine to work with 5 grains of titegroup.

If you must use the Autodisk with your Dillon, go back the actual disk and toss that adjustable thingy.

Edited March 20, 2007 by North

[justforfun]

I had the same problem with mine. It works fine with larger charges but does not work with the lighter ones.

[clem]

Well holy cow, who reads the instructions? Evidently not me. I'll have to dig them out now and see what they say.

As long as you use the fixed discs, 3.5 grains of Bullseye works fine, it's just the adjustable charge bar that causes problems. So I guess the cure is don't use the adjustable bar, pretty simple, huh?

Really, I was just curious if it was just me or if the charge bar was a boner.

[acrashb]

Really, I was just curious if it was just me or if the charge bar was a boner.

The adjustable works well with fine ball powders at light charges, so you can either switch to a ball powder or use the disks as you mentioned - which have the advantage of being easy to reset to a specific charge (no vernier to misread). Also, for really light charges Lee makes the 'micro disk', part number 90302.

I had problems with Universal Clays at light loads - a flake powder.

[aerosigns]

Clem,

I have the same Adjustable Charge bar for my Lee.

First I spoke with the company. They say that it's not meant for light loads that handguns use. They really only meant it for rifle loads. But of course they don't bother to tell you that in ANY of their literature. Wonder why?

Second if have a vernier measure the inside width of the bar, then measure the inside width of the hole that the powder drops through. You will find the the charge bar is larger than the hole. So it wipes an amount of powder across the platform. Whatever is over the hole falls in. Whatever is along the edges doesn't. It gets dragged back for another attempt at falling in the hole.

That's why the factory would rather you use it with a rifle loading 20 grains where +/- a grain isn't so bad, but when you load handgun and are looking for +/- a .1 of a grain it makes a difference.

Mine is hanging on the wall as a reminder of what to expect from the red reloader company.

[TBF]

I had pretty much the same results with the adjustable , discs work alot better for me.

Travis F.