Nose down collated auto sizer

[jmorris]

There has been interest in this forum before for a nose down bullet collator for sizing and I put together and other one this afternoon for the auto Lee sizer I threw together for testing.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cc1hUj343w

[Tazza]

Simple, yet effective! as always, nice work Jmorris

I want to build one of these, I need to build the top part first, the actual collator. I have most of the parts already, i just need to work out how to mount the motor and where to cut the grooves to flip the projectiles. I hope to be able to use an old turntable motor from a microwave. It is about 5-6 RPM, but i plan on cutting quite a few grooves into the plate, so it should easily keep up.

[jmorris]

Slower seems to be better with the ones I have built. The one above uses a 12v motor but it is only running off of a 3 volt transformer.

There are quite a few pics uploaded here at CB but there are two here that show the base, with nose guide and the jigs I made for the wheels.

http://s121.photobucket.com/user/jmorrismetal/library/reloading/bullet%20feeder?sort=3&start=all&page=1

[MT Chambers]

Al that tech. and expense and you still aren't lubing any??

[Tazza]

That is very fancy. Hopefully i can cobble something together that will do the trick. It all goes on when i will get time to have a fiddle and see what sort of mess i can make.

[jmorris]

Al that tech. and expense and you still aren't lubing any??

They are hi-tek coated before being sized. Most of my pistol ammo gets fired at different competitions and smokey wax based lubes (even less smokey ones) are not the best choice.

The only thing I bought for the first try was the die and press itself. Everything else is what my wife calls "junk", I prefer to look at it as recycling.

[el34]

Could a nose-up version be used to set boolots upright on the pan for spray powdercoating? Even placed on the 6-32 nuts beneath the foil? Would require a way to guide the boolit where it needs to go.

[Tazza]

el34 - i can't see why it couldn't be used that way, does it really take that long to stand them up to coat them though? It would be fancy to see something with an arm that places projectiles on a pan with correct spacing though.

[jmorris]

I though I read a few threads where folks were tumble coating with PC too.?

[Tazza]

I'm not sure how that would even work, interesting concept though.

I coat mine with the dip/spin method. Three coats then re-size, works very well and quick to do. The slowest part is waiting for the coating to air dry before baking in the oven.

[jmorris]

Searched "tumble coat" here and this was the first one that came up.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?226535-My-powder-coating-adventure-today&highlight=tumble+coating

[Tazza]

Not bad at all. It does make sense. In the early stages of my casting, i tried coating with moly and my tumbler, it was a total disaster. I did find that a small coating did stick from the tumbling action, but it was not the right coating at all. After shooting 50 or so rounds, i had whiskers of lead sticking out of the compensator of my .38 super and a smooth bore barrel.

[jmorris]

Been there done that, moly powder is a no go for sure on cast lead.

[el34]

The chunk of this forum centered around 'alternate coatings' meaning anything but lube has mucho ongoing discussion and pictures about powdercoating. Dry tumble (DT) is a hot topic mainly because of it's minimal equipment involvement. But there is no doubt that electrostatic spraying yields superior results. The extra involvement is a $59 powdercoat gun from Harbor Freight and a small compressor.

Boolits are sat upright over non-stick aluminum foil and sprayed. Then put into the toaster oven to bake. The 'standing them up' on the pan is the (relative speaking) time-consuming part and one day I was fantasizing a collator from a progressive press being used to "plop-plop-plop" boolits, and with whatever it took to drop them onto the little pedestals formed by 6-32 nuts under the foil. But the pan can't be moved to the next spot because the other boolits would fall over.

Using a collator for that would rock.

[Tazza]

The only issue i see is how fragile is the coating before curing? I see the collator removing coating as it rotates, then the projectile drops down the tube and may loose more coating.

I agree that anything to speed up the process is a bonus

[jmorris]

I gave powder coating, plating and hi-tek all a try last year. I liked the HT coating the best, quickest for me to apply with the least amount of mess.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?190040-Bullet-coating&highlight=Bullet+coating

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?196265-Bullet-coating-part-II&highlight=Bullet+coating

[5Shot]

That is impressive! I might actually be able to find the time to reload if I had something like that!

[bmiller]

Great work!!! I hope to build something similar this winter.