380 versus 9 mm case sorter

[ddeck22]

This is a tool to sort 380 from 9 mm cases. Simply put the two pieces together with an m4 bolt (it's a 5 mm hole) and dump brass onto the top. The brass will fall into the holes and stand upright. Remove the top portion and look across the top to see any height differences. The shorter ones are the 380 to be removed.

I just used Tinkercad for this and my slider to modify a 45 ACP ammo box. 9 mm ammo boxes were too small and 40 S&W was also too small for the cases to fall in easily.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5249323

Any feedback is appreciated.

[ddeck22]

In action:

View: https://youtu.be/RRD-9TBvVKM


Sorry about it being in portrait :(

M4 screws work well as the holders...if you wanted you could glue them in place at the head. I had some printing trouble, but finally eradicated the stringing this morning. Running with PETG on these ones. This is using the exact files as above, so anyone can print this.

The 3 .380 ones were only found in the second set...the first set had 0.

[Winger Ed.]

I lay them out on a hard, flat surface and shuffle 'em around until several at a time are laying side by side.
Then push them up with and against a 6-8" straight edge and you'll see the difference in length.

For the amount of range .380/9mm I pick up at a time, it goes pretty fast.

[ddeck22]

An update.....found that just making it 15 mm high worked just as well, and if you use two, you can flip them to view headstamps.

https://youtu.be/QXshLtZftuk

[nesdid]

thumbs up on this - sorting 380 brass is a pain

[anothernewb]

hard to remember where I saw it. but I saw once someone had made a 380/9mm in situ sorter using a raspberry pi and a iphone. it was based off one of those M&M color sorting machines. long story short - it attached to a case feeder tube and used the phone's camera to look at the length of the case. short (380) cases were ejected from the tube via a compressed air jet. looked slick as anything. But they wanted several hundred bucks for the setup, and you still needed to supply your own phone.

[ddeck22]

Sounds like a fun project but a little overkill unless you are processing 1000's of cases a day.

I saw something that did the same for identifying 45 acp with small primer pockets. It would push them right or left based on the primer pocket size.

[nesdid]

sounds pretty awesome