ChargeMaster 1500

[jack19512]

Does anyone have any opinions on the RCBS ChargeMaster 1500?

http://www.midwayusa.com/viewProduct/?productNumber=772151

[zomby woof]

I've read they are very nice. The keypads have problems.

I have a Lyman DPS 3 that I am pleased with.

[Heavy lead]

One of the last tools I would get rid of, simply grreeeeeeeeeaaaaaaattttttttttttttttttttttttttt! I have never had problem with the keypad or anything else on it.
Completely satisfied, I've had mine for 4 years and have thrown tons of rifle charges with it.

[c3d4b2]

Here is a better deal

http://accurateshooter.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/rcbs-chargemaster-on-sale-at-natchez-279-95/

Here is some additional information

http://www.6mmbr.com/catalog/item/1433308/1266096.htm

http://www.6mmbr.com/powderdispensers01.html

the article is a bit dated and (if I remember correctly?) there has been some improvements with the other models.

I have not had any issue with my keypad. I did have some variation in the charges that RCBS readily fixed.

Dave

[Jon K]

I have had mine for less than a year, and am HAPPY with it.
No problems, no complaints.

I am now using powders I would never use before, because of bridging and hard to charge issues.

Buy one and don't look back.......

Jon

[AJ Peacock]

3+ years here, no problems and I use it ALL the time.

AJ

[wallenba]

Had mine for about a year now. This thing rocks. It will sense the air pressure from waving your hand over it. My tare weight drifts occasionally (by no more than 0.10) I think it's from moving air in the room. After calibrating you can just enter your weight, press enter, then press dispense. It will measure out everytime the pan is returned to the scale, beeps when it is done and keeps count. Emptying is a snap too with side dump chute that can be closed. It also stores loads in a memory library.

[Storydude]

I have the PACT combo, never used the RCBS chargemaster....(Even though mine is RCBS green with a RCBS sticker..Pact made them for RCBS)

I love mine. calibration sometimes takes 10 min for a new powder, but once set, punch in weight, hit enter, hit dispense.

Less than a .1G drift and the longer you use it with one powder, the faster it gets and drift drops.

[mike in co]

for the stuff we do here it would be an excellent tool.
it is used by SOME of the true benchrest crowd..has a good following.
they have reworked the programming with feedback from the br crowd.

older models are not like current models

but it is still just a plus or minus 0.1 scale.......

like i said good enought for 90+% of what most do...and a sale price....

mike in co

[kelbro]

My first one had the keypad problem within a month of purchasing it. RCBS made it right and I have been going on two years with the replacement without a hitch. I can get in a rhythm with this thing and it is almost as fast as throwing with the Lyman 55. I have gone weeks between calibrations and the check weights say it doesn't drift.

[jack19512]

Thanks for the replies. So far in doing my research on it from what I have read it doesn't like powders such as 296, one of the powders I use a lot of. I don't know if it is true or not.

[JesterGrin_1]

You guys need to stop before I put my RCBS 10-10 beam scale in the mothballs and get the RCBS lol. :)

But one way out question can you use the scale to weigh BOOLITS?

[1hole]

"Does anyone have any opinions on the RCBS ChargeMaster 1500?"

Opinion, ? Yeah, it's a great, if vastly over priced, solution to a problem I don't have.

[Ken 45LC]

I've had mine for more than 5 years, and haven't had any problems with it. Someone else already stated one of the biggest benefits is that you can use the larger extruded powders that tend to be a pain with a normal powder measure. It has allowed me to explore many more powders that I would have normally avoided.

It probably boils down to how much you are going to use it. I don't use mine nearly as much as I'd like to, but i can say the same for alot of my reloading equipment. It is pricey, but what isn't anymore? All of my favorite loadings are saved in it's memory, and with a quick double check, you're dropping powder in no time. It also has a counter for the number of times it dispensed a charge. So if you're loading 50 at a time, and you're on your last shell but the dispenser says 49 you know you missed one.

I really appreciated the ease of operation when I was teaching my 17 year old brother how to relaod. I know he felt better knowing every charge was weighed, and knew he wouldn't blow up anything (so did I).

Thanks,
Ken

[Heavy lead]

Thanks for the replies. So far in doing my research on it from what I have read it doesn't like powders such as 296, one of the powders I use a lot of. I don't know if it is true or not.

While I've never used 296 in it I have used other ball powders that are not as fine such as H380 (when working up a load only as this obviously throws in a measure great) and it works fine. But it does shine with extruded powders.

[Rocky Raab]

This gets asked so often I made it a cut-paste:

Have had the original RCBS unit since they came out and you could not pry my hands off it - unless it was being replaced by the new model. Have never used the Lyman, so can't comment.

There is simply no way you can weigh and trickle up charges AND load ammo faster than with these units. While the next charge is dispensing, I'm seating a bullet in the previous round. By the time I do that and pick up a new piece of primed brass, the next charge is ready, weighed to the tenth grain with the weight displayed in big numbers (no slipped poise weight giving me a load five grains off!)

No loading blocks to spill, no mis-read balance beam, no time lost, and no charge un-weighed. Every round gets exactly one weighed charge, every round gets inspected, and reloading is FUN.

[Heavy lead]

You guys need to stop before I put my RCBS 10-10 beam scale in the mothballs and get the RCBS lol. :)

But one way out question can you use the scale to weigh BOOLITS?

Do it all the time, I still have my old Hornady balance beam scale, but rarely use it.

[Heavy lead]

This gets asked so often I made it a cut-paste:

Have had the original RCBS unit since they came out and you could not pry my hands off it - unless it was being replaced by the new model. Have never used the Lyman, so can't comment.

There is simply no way you can weigh and trickle up charges AND load ammo faster than with these units. While the next charge is dispensing, I'm seating a bullet in the previous round. By the time I do that and pick up a new piece of primed brass, the next charge is ready, weighed to the tenth grain with the weight displayed in big numbers (no slipped poise weight giving me a load five grains off!)

No loading blocks to spill, no mis-read balance beam, no time lost, and no charge un-weighed. Every round gets exactly one weighed charge, every round gets inspected, and reloading is FUN.

Exactly HL does it too.

[wallenba]

Thanks for the replies. So far in doing my research on it from what I have read it doesn't like powders such as 296, one of the powders I use a lot of. I don't know if it is true or not.

The metering tube has an Archemides screw in it that moves the powder forward. the ball powders like 296 might have a tendency to keep moving when the thing stops metering and over dump. I use Win 231 in it with no problems though. One might try tilting it upward with some paper shims to see if it helps.

[Cowboy5780]

Id buy mine again works super great

[kelbro]

Let me add something here that could be important.

I went out to load some last night. 357 loads using 2400.

My zero was a little off (.3-4gr) so I reset it.

Noticed the grains dancing around a little in the back of the pan when I removed it from the scale.

Instead of stopping to investigate, I keep pouring. Finally it got the best of me and I grabbed one of my used dryer sheets that I use to de-static my measure and wiped down the scale platen and the drop tube.

Surprise! Those .4 grains that I changed the zero were back.

Luckily I had only poured 18 rounds at this time and had not seated any. I checked a sample of them and they were all .3-.4gr over.

Could be a problem if one loads max loads so be careful.

[JesterGrin_1]

Thanks for the replies. So far in doing my research on it from what I have read it doesn't like powders such as 296, one of the powders I use a lot of. I don't know if it is true or not.

I also load a bunch of H-110 and W-296 so if it will not work well with those powders I will just keep with my RCBS Measure as it dumps those powders well.

[kelbro]

Mine works fine with ball powders. It seems to throw the fine ball powders with less overthrows than the extrudeds and short cuts.

[AJ Peacock]

I've used mine with ball powders as well. Just setup the base so it's fairly level (pretty easy if your work surface is at all level) and it works just fine.

AJ