The pivot pin for my lead drop was sitting next to my pot when I went out to the shed to check on the 38's that were being cast:
I have never had this issue with my 9mm's or 45's it only decides to get mad when I cast using my Magma 38/158/SWC mold. I put the pin back in and hooked it in with a cotter pin instead of the bent arm pin. The local hardware store only had aluminum or brass cotter pins in the appropriate size. I will have to order a stainless version on my next McMaster order.
It doesn't seem to like the .38 ones indeed. I found the vibrations sure can rattle things a bit. I found a pivot bolt for my ram fell out during testing.
I coated a few thousand 9mm conicals this week, sized a few hundred today and loaded them up for tomorrow. Got my blower finished today too, just need to tinker with the wiring, but that won't take long.
Got my new PID during the week, i was all excited and hooked it up only to be disappointed at the fact.... it DIDN'T WORK. My luck has been bad with PIDs, the fist one i ordered never arrived, the second arrived in a little over a week but was broken. I opened it up and measured the resistance on the small transformer it has, the primary was open the secondaries were fine. It never showed any life, so it must have been a did from the factory. At least another 2 weeks till i may have a working one. At least i have some projectiles cast to get me out of trouble.
I also have a 9v power pack on the way to power the arduino, this way the solenoids will be running off a separate supply than the arduino.
Fired the MC up on Saturday, got to run it for about 4 hours. It had a few hiccups but it did pretty well. I got about 3,500 projectiles done in that time. The fan makes a huge difference, i did run it without one, but the cycle times were quite a bit higher for obvious reasons. I made the fan box with fins to direct air down over the open mold, and one directs the air back to cool the lead just after pouring. I think the cycle times were about 6.5 seconds.
As for the PID saga, that is still on going, the seller offered me a $3 refund on an item that cost just under $14, so i get to pay to keep a defective unit, oddly i declined his lovely offer. The internal transformer had an open primary, so while the MC was running, i figured i'd have a fiddle. I unwound the secondaries and got to the primary windings, scraped the insulation off the ends and re-soldered it, i now had resistance. Re-wound the primary windings, and it all worked. When it was made, they didn't remove the insulation before they soldered over it..... Great quality control, but what can you expect for a $14 PID?
But he was offering his cost back $3. I am very surprised but happy that you were able to fix it. I look forward to seeing pictures with the fan box.Originally Posted by Tazza
That is what i thought too, i guess time will tell how it goes. I will leave it in the hands of PayPal.
I will try and get some pictures this arvo, it's not very complicated, but it works pretty well. It runs two 115v fans in series, one either side of a cube. There is a hole at the bottom with fins to direct the air.
pictures to follow
does any one have a Master caster for sale?
sportslube@aol.com
Pictures and a movie, still not complete, but ever closer.
http://s903.photobucket.com/user/taz...60143.mp4.html
http://i903.photobucket.com/albums/a...610_153352.jpg
Nothing really pretty, but it does the job. I hoped to put finger guards over the fans, but the ones i had turned out to be a little too small..... Whoops!
Do the sprues and bullets get mixed? Do the bullets that fall to the floor get too beat up to use or are they still ok?
The sprues when the mold is cold, fall in to the correct spot of the machine and land in the metal drawer below, when hot they fly across the floor, i have yet to work out why..... As there is no shield at the front, the sprues do not mix with the projectiles very often, i get one here and there, i'd say less than one in one hundred, i feel that is acceptable. It is very rare for a projectile to not go down the chute and into it's metal tray. The chute is lined with toweling to prevent damage.
The video makes it look like the projectiles are being slung all over the place, but they really aren't, they simply fall and are collected in a drawer. The spruse however fly about 1m from the machine.
I'm planning on making a new sprue plate too, i am just not sure if it is meant to have bends in it or not. I have one that has bends on the ends, the other is flat.....
The pictures look great, I can't seem to load the video. (I have issues with photobucket video's as my machine rather html5 than flash).
Use 1/4 inch hardware cloth and form a fence around the output side of the caster. Keeps the sprues close.
I am back home from CA and am able to view the video's on my IPad and the video's are great. Your runs a lot quicker than mine. As shootinfox2 said making a cage should keep the sprues in the caster. You might reduce the flow to slow it down too.
ShootinFox - I like that idea, i was going to build some sort of a funnel to direct them into a bucket. Current;y it has a cardboard box with some pieces of old perspex at the back and a side to help keep them contained. I may look into doing as you have done with the 1/4" sheet.
Kayak1 - I hope you had a nice trip. It does run nice at that speed, it does have a problem with lead collecting under the sprue plate, but i think it's mostly due to the plate not being dead flat and there is a small wear spot on the mold that allows lead to build up here. I don't think it's going too fast as the sprues are still solid when cut, if i go too fast, they are a little soft and just turn to crumbs when they hit the floor. You will hear a squeak in the video, that is the lead stuck under the sprue. I shut it down and scrape it off with a sharpened screwdriver.
I am also running fairly low lead temperatures, i have my PID set to 330 degrees C, it's enough for the lead to be molted and the sprues have a nice lump. If i turn the heat up more, they flatten out a lot more and increases the mold temperature that means i need to slow things down. This figure seems to be quite good, as long as you don't fill the pot up too fast, it won't freeze on you. I thought i read that others set their pot to 400F, which is about 370C, i'm just not sure if there is any advantage in doing so.
I hooked up another power supply to power the arduino, sadly it still hangs at different times, but always at the same spot, just after lead pour. I'm still stumped as to why it is happening at this point, and only this point. If it was a power issue, surely it would pause at any point in the program, not the same every time.
You might hook up a PC to the Arduino to watch the serial output and possibly add more debugging to get to the bottom of the issue.
I was thinking the same, i was just unsure as to what outputs it can generate to log on the pc. I'll need to see if i can bribe my brother to come over and have a tinker with the code to connect a pc to it for debugging.
Even with the glitches, it does a good job. I have about 9,000 cast with it waiting being coated, plus about 3,000 that are already coated and being used.
if you hook the USB to the PC pull up the arduino app then you should be able to hit CTL-M to load the monitor that will display the debugging. If you send me you current code I can add extra debugg if you need it.
Kayak1 - i'll give it a shot on the weekend. I'll email you the code i'm using later tonight, hopefully it will get to the bottom of the issue.
Made tons of bullets on mine now. Somewhere between Hatch and Wyman's numbers I think.
Made a few good mods. Got rid of the factory fan and placed two 12v high flow computer fans. One high speed 40mm pointing at the mold when up with a deflector to keep the air off the spout and another 60mm pointing down at the mold when open. Speed control knob on the one facing the mold when up.
Another mod was a sprue cutter stop (bent piece of metal) attached to one of the bolts that holds the deflector in. Stop the ever annoying over rotation of the sprue plate without having to tighten it down as much.
Todays Question: Double tap. Do you guys use it for everything now? I havn't tried it yet, but the number one issue I have is the small light bullets just not wanting to fall out. I have to run a pretty hard hit to get consistent release of the bullets. Any downsides so far to longevity of the main ram using the double tap all the time?
I need the double tap to release my projectiles. Even then not all fall. My setp uses kayak1's setup. So my double tap will be different. I have a restrictor in my ram so the initial strike is not hard the second is a little harder but not much. I too installed a stopper to prevent sprue cutter over rotation, I see no reason there will be issues running double taps you may be able to dial down the air pressure too
If you have an Oxy/Act rig, fire it up with only Act and smoke the mold. They fall right out of mine when it opens (no tap with my eletric setup).
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| BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
| BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
| BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
| C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
| HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
| PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
| LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
| GC | Gas Check |
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