That's a little gold nugget right there, thanks Houndog!
Just goes to show that we can beef everything up, but our tooling and equipment materials still go elastic before they go plastic.
We're you concerned at all that 'fast stroking' might have exceeded the operating forces of the spring mechanism in the dial indicator. Readings would have obviously fluctuated more so at speed, but were they possibly exaggerated? Much like using a dial indicator on a lathe, you normally hand turn the spindle as opposed to running it at 2000 rpm.
It would have been interesting to see the
area under the curve so to speak, comparing fast and slow stroking. I keep thinking that a pressure gauge or a load cell might be more appropriate, but something is mostly better than nothing, as long as you're aware of it's limits.
Spoke to a local swager this month about his collection of hydraulic presses used to make bullet jackets from 17 to 30 cal. Apparently he has a robotics engineering background etc.; and spent quite a few years getting the presses running consistently with various PLC controls and gauges as part of closed loop feedback system. Although he was quite happy to discuss some of his observations for a J4 plant tour he did in the 80's, but after 20min I pretty much got the impression he was taking everything else to the grave.
It's frustrating knowing where the nuggets are buried, but still out off your reach. What's even more frustrating is that some people don't appreciate that their equipment, tooling and knowledge only has value, if others exist that understand it's value; and are therefore able to give it a place in the community. Sharing is the only chance small scale bullet swaging has from going under because we are only treading water at the moment. Anyone thought about what will happen when the Corbins both go, and the will go, we all have to go eventually. Regardless of what you think of their products and services, they still make up a significant part of the supply chain and without them the shift in balance could shrink our community past the point of no return.
Apologies to the OP for going off topic (as I often do), but if you spotted a gold nugget aside the path; I'm sure you'd stop (if safe to do so) and take at least a quick look.