Bullet Feeder

[toecutter]

So, I saw this site the other day:

http://www.bulletfeeder.com/

It has some videos of what may be one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. Unfortunately, since I'm a dedicated tinkerer I have felt the need to make a bullet feeder for .223 bullets.

I'm still working on some sketches, but one of the considerations I had was would this be better if the bullet feeder was inline with the seating die. I.e. charged case goes into the seating die, finished round comes out. Or would a dedicated placing die be better?

Unfortunately, I'm working on lee pro 1000's which only have 3 die positions.... what to do what to do...

[44man]

I see a bunch of bullets upside down in the drum. How does it turn them the right way?

[toecutter]

it has a little slot in the bottom. Any bullet that is upside down has a small enough diameter (compared to the back of the bullet) that it will slip down into a slot, that moves outwards. when the tip of the bullet catches this slot, gravity pulling it down onto the rotator thingy, and the slot pulling the tip upwards (away from gravity) puts the bullet on it's side, then there's another little ramp thingy that turns the bullet right side up. It's a pretty slick and simple design.

A while ago I visited a local bullet factory, they had all these cool machines that could do like 20 things at once, and in tandem. And then the bullets would run down a little tube, that was more spring than tube, into the machine that cut the cannelure, and then spit out the bullet at the bottom.

I was thinking about making this bullet feeder thing work similarly, and just feed the bullets from a flexible spring tube type thing.

I decided that the single function die would be simplest at first, so I'm going to try to finish it this week, and post my pictures and some drawings (once I clean them up). I think I need a mill to finish this, so it looks like I'm going to have to hunt down a place that will let me use one for about an hour.

[LAH]

I love things like this. Great post.........Creeker