Here goes nothing I guess. I am more confused than a Amish man standing in Circuit City with all I have to learn to post with pictures.
This is one side view of the most critical linkage I had to come up with. The 1/2" threaded rod is welded to the piece of flat steel that is connected to the rotating plywood wheel. I welded a bolt on to the 1/2" nut that was long enough that it had a 1" or so shoulder. Then cut off the threaded part.
I then welded a nut on the end of the arm I made for the Star and drilled out all the threads. I also drilled a hole on top to put a few drips of oil in as all this is just steal on steal and i want it to last for a while. I do have the bullet feeder and will talk about that more later. But sense i had the feeder having my motorized contraption when cycling it needed to not only stop at the right place at the bottom of the stroke, it also had to make the handle stop at the right place at the top of the stroke. So my thinking was this. If I had the 1/2" threaded rod with a nut on it that would let me decide where the stroke would take place by moving the nut up or down. Then i could fine tune that motion by how long the arm was that goes where the handle was. Between those 2 adjustments I could control the length of the stroke and where it took place.
About the auto feed. I first had plans to make this thing do most of the work. I first learned i had it running so fast that I was not able to keep up by dropping bullets in the feeder so i slowed the machine down. But the much bigger problem was the slight smear of lead when casting that would prevent a bullet from falling through the transfer bar of the feeder that would drop the bullet in to the die. If the was much flash on it at all gravity did not pull it through fast enough for the transfer bar to get back out of the way in time for the top punch coming down. That is where setting the belt tension as light as i could and still have enough power to size bullets came in very handy. I also was not getting lube all the way around the bullet no matter where I set the air pressure. As I slowed down the machine it got better and better. I just gave up on the auto feeder and am glad I didn't buy a collator. I had a collator in the past and I could never get it to run fast enough to keep up with an old auto sizer I once had. It just couldn't figure out which end went down on 1 of my favorite bullets.
About the knee switch or moving it to hand operated. I agree there is a safety issue here. I feel that everything would go a lot slower if I took the time to hit a switch with my hand to cycle the machine. The time spent cycling the machine is the same time I am using to grab the next bullet. Two things I try to do all the time are never have a finger under the top punch in the process of dropping in a bullet and to pinch the bullets in such a way that at the most only a small part of my finger tips are under the punch. If I was much of a beer drinker that would have to wait till after I was done here.
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Originally Posted by Roundnoser
