EDG
05-14-2014, 05:40 PM
I have an orange Lyman 450 with the up to date ram and handle linkage.
I have 5 other lube sizers 3 gray Lyman 450s and 2 RCBS -one the original LAM and the other a LAM II.
I bought the LAM in 1976 used it a while and sold it to a BPCR shooter. I bought it back after his vision went south. I have continued to use it to to lube large caliber rifle bullets. The ram is still very tight.
I bought the LAMII used and it appears that it had seen a lot of use but is still tight and works well.
All 3 of the older gray 450s are reasonably tight though they do not get used a lot. I bought all them used.
It has grated on my nerves that the orange 450 was so sloppy. This afternoon I took it apart to use a whiz bang inside mike on it. The mike is a Tesa Intramike, Swiss made and marketed in the US by Brown & Sharpe.
It will measure from .800 inch to 1.000 inch inside diameters and it is direct reading in .0002" increments on the thimble. It has 3 contact surfaces.
I measured the ram at .808 pretty much all over except the front to rear where the ram touched the guide at the full down position - both at the top of the guide and the bottom of the guide. At the wear points it measured .8078 - about .0002 wear. These were check with a Brown and Sharpe carbide face mike. I double checked it with a Swiss mike and got about .0001 smaller .
Next I checked the ram guide bore in the casting. About 30 % of the interior surface was still colored by orange over spray. Looking down into the top at 4 oclock there was a patch of paint nearly the size of a dime that was still intact in an area where the reamer or boring bar cut oversize maybe .0005.
The bore was measured next. My Tesa mike wobbled around a bit. By shifting the clocking of the feet, it would measure about .0005 out of round. With one of the 3 feet to the front I got .8115. I got different dimensions depending on where I clocked the feet of the Intramike. Due to the out of round the high dollar mike was a flop. I changed measurement methods to a telescoping gauge and a 1" OD mike. A telescoping gauge just measures the with two points. You have to be careful with 2 point measurement if you have a 3 lobed hole. You might measure it consistently even though shaped like a Wankel rotor.
At the top and bottom of the guide I got .8125 front to back and .8120 side to side.
In the middle of the guide I got it pretty close to round at .8100. The Tesa Intramike got about the same thing in the middle because the hole was still pretty much round.
Note that the ram was originally about .808 all over. At the top (front to back) and bottom (front to back) the clearance is .0045 to .0047. When new, the hole appears to have been .810 and a little tighter due to the paint. A coat of paint may measure anywhere around .003 normally so when assembled at Lyman or a sub contractor it would have felt tight. The finish was so rough that the paint and the high points of the tool marks wore quickly leaving the ram sloppy.
Next I measured the ram slop front to back using a dial travel indicator. With the ram at the full down position, the fore aft motion was .020 measured between the set screw and the end of the ram right on top of the die retention nut. I measured at the top of the ram guide with the ram in several locations from full up to full down and got .006 fore aft motion.
I also noticed that when the ram was pulled forward it was .010 from outside edge of one of the nut flats
When ram was pushed to the back the ram was about .020 from the nut flat indicating that the ram is off location compared to the nut by about .005. This is probably due to uneven wear at the bottom front due to the loading from the handle.
I did all of this to explore how I might rework the tool to remove all the slop.
I would prefer to line bore it on a milling machine and install a bushing.
I could make a .001 brass shim and curl it into the gap all around but it would not remove all of the slop.
Years ago I bought a barely used ram and linkage on Ebay. Apparently someone had installed the updated linkage on an older 450 and I got his discards cheap. This ram measures .811 diameter. It will start into the top of the ram guide about .250 by hand before it wedges tight.
Added EDIT --->>>> I checked one of my other gray 450 rams. It also measured .811. <<<
I am thinking about finding an auto machine shop that will let me watch while they hone it to fit.
Failing that I have a drill press and a brake cylinder hone that might remove about .001 in the middle of the guide if I am careful and persistent. Any way it is another project.
Lyman could spend a week of design time and a couple of weeks retooling and changing their machining processes to make the 4500 a good tool. It needs to be about 3/4" to 1" inch taller to make the guide longer.
Then they need a good process to make the guide and the ram have about a .0002 clearance. While they are at it they can make the ram 1" in diameter.
Anyway that is all I have on the subject today. I will probably think about it a little more and call a few machine shops. I may try my hone first. If it is too slow I will let the guys with the honing machine open it enough to use the old style ram. Neither method will correct any off axis issues though.
I have 5 other lube sizers 3 gray Lyman 450s and 2 RCBS -one the original LAM and the other a LAM II.
I bought the LAM in 1976 used it a while and sold it to a BPCR shooter. I bought it back after his vision went south. I have continued to use it to to lube large caliber rifle bullets. The ram is still very tight.
I bought the LAMII used and it appears that it had seen a lot of use but is still tight and works well.
All 3 of the older gray 450s are reasonably tight though they do not get used a lot. I bought all them used.
It has grated on my nerves that the orange 450 was so sloppy. This afternoon I took it apart to use a whiz bang inside mike on it. The mike is a Tesa Intramike, Swiss made and marketed in the US by Brown & Sharpe.
It will measure from .800 inch to 1.000 inch inside diameters and it is direct reading in .0002" increments on the thimble. It has 3 contact surfaces.
I measured the ram at .808 pretty much all over except the front to rear where the ram touched the guide at the full down position - both at the top of the guide and the bottom of the guide. At the wear points it measured .8078 - about .0002 wear. These were check with a Brown and Sharpe carbide face mike. I double checked it with a Swiss mike and got about .0001 smaller .
Next I checked the ram guide bore in the casting. About 30 % of the interior surface was still colored by orange over spray. Looking down into the top at 4 oclock there was a patch of paint nearly the size of a dime that was still intact in an area where the reamer or boring bar cut oversize maybe .0005.
The bore was measured next. My Tesa mike wobbled around a bit. By shifting the clocking of the feet, it would measure about .0005 out of round. With one of the 3 feet to the front I got .8115. I got different dimensions depending on where I clocked the feet of the Intramike. Due to the out of round the high dollar mike was a flop. I changed measurement methods to a telescoping gauge and a 1" OD mike. A telescoping gauge just measures the with two points. You have to be careful with 2 point measurement if you have a 3 lobed hole. You might measure it consistently even though shaped like a Wankel rotor.
At the top and bottom of the guide I got .8125 front to back and .8120 side to side.
In the middle of the guide I got it pretty close to round at .8100. The Tesa Intramike got about the same thing in the middle because the hole was still pretty much round.
Note that the ram was originally about .808 all over. At the top (front to back) and bottom (front to back) the clearance is .0045 to .0047. When new, the hole appears to have been .810 and a little tighter due to the paint. A coat of paint may measure anywhere around .003 normally so when assembled at Lyman or a sub contractor it would have felt tight. The finish was so rough that the paint and the high points of the tool marks wore quickly leaving the ram sloppy.
Next I measured the ram slop front to back using a dial travel indicator. With the ram at the full down position, the fore aft motion was .020 measured between the set screw and the end of the ram right on top of the die retention nut. I measured at the top of the ram guide with the ram in several locations from full up to full down and got .006 fore aft motion.
I also noticed that when the ram was pulled forward it was .010 from outside edge of one of the nut flats
When ram was pushed to the back the ram was about .020 from the nut flat indicating that the ram is off location compared to the nut by about .005. This is probably due to uneven wear at the bottom front due to the loading from the handle.
I did all of this to explore how I might rework the tool to remove all the slop.
I would prefer to line bore it on a milling machine and install a bushing.
I could make a .001 brass shim and curl it into the gap all around but it would not remove all of the slop.
Years ago I bought a barely used ram and linkage on Ebay. Apparently someone had installed the updated linkage on an older 450 and I got his discards cheap. This ram measures .811 diameter. It will start into the top of the ram guide about .250 by hand before it wedges tight.
Added EDIT --->>>> I checked one of my other gray 450 rams. It also measured .811. <<<
I am thinking about finding an auto machine shop that will let me watch while they hone it to fit.
Failing that I have a drill press and a brake cylinder hone that might remove about .001 in the middle of the guide if I am careful and persistent. Any way it is another project.
Lyman could spend a week of design time and a couple of weeks retooling and changing their machining processes to make the 4500 a good tool. It needs to be about 3/4" to 1" inch taller to make the guide longer.
Then they need a good process to make the guide and the ram have about a .0002 clearance. While they are at it they can make the ram 1" in diameter.
Anyway that is all I have on the subject today. I will probably think about it a little more and call a few machine shops. I may try my hone first. If it is too slow I will let the guys with the honing machine open it enough to use the old style ram. Neither method will correct any off axis issues though.