Ammunition & Hand Loading > Cartridge and Shotshell reloading

Hornady 9mm/380 bullet feeder die jamming up

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OnTheFly:
I am finally getting around to setting up my Entirely Crimson DIY bullet collator on my Dillon XL650.

NOTE: Entirely Crimson has indefinitely suspended sales of their bullet collator DIY kit. I don't have any specific information, but I'm guessing a bigger player in the market has claimed patent infringement. He keeps saying that he is hoping to start up again, but no date.



First about the collator:
Setting up the collator was an interesting tinkering project, but once I got it all together, it works like a charm. Some small adjustments and I've got 99.9% of the bullets dropping base down. I have not put it through it's paces, as I'm working through some die problems (as detailed below), but I'm pretty impressed with the unit so far.

Issue #1 (Die Jams):
I set up the Hornady bullet die per the instructions. when I drop bullets into the die by hand until it is full, then operate the press, the bullets drop onto the case reliably. Every time I pull the handle, the bullets drop and I place another bullet in the top of the die to keep it full. When I hook up the feed tube from the collator, the bullets feed into the die and are stacked up all the way to the proximity sensor at the top of the tube. However, they somehow get jammed inside the die and stop feeding unless I jiggle the feeder tube from the collator. I can see that the bullets are stacked up in the die. That is to say, I can see they are not getting hung up where the feeder tube meets the opening in the die, so the issue is inside the die.

My thought is that the stack of bullets (~12" high) is putting too much weight on the lower bullets in the die and causing them to jam up. I have not had time to check my theory, but I'm thinking if I move the proximity sensor as low as I can on the feeder tube, that the reduced weight might solve the problem.

Issue #2 (Bullet Sling):
The Hornady instructions are pretty specific about the case flare dimensions. When the bullets do drop onto the case, they (too) often fall off of the case as the shell plate rotates to the next station. I tried adjusting the flare (larger and smaller), but it does not seem to make a difference. I think one possible solution is trying to adjust the "snap" out of the shell plate indexing. I have a roller bearing under the shell plate bolt that smooths things out a little, but not enough. I have also seen a low mass ball that can replace the current ball bearing to reduce snap.

Does anyone else have experience with these components?

Thanks,
Fly

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