Dillon powder measure and VV N320

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rfwobbly

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A friend with a 1050 reports having absolute accuracy with Win231 and WSF powders in his Dillon powder measure, all except for VV N320. He's a technical type guy so I have no need to doubt his numbers, but according to him, N320 varies by as much as .4 grains when dispensing 4.1gr loads. That's more than 1/3 of a grain, or 10% !! I feel bad because I recommended N320 to him, having never seen this type variation on my 550. I told him to call the Dillon hot line.

He's got the small powder bar installed and using a Dillon digital scale to record his measurements.

Has anyone else ever seen this with N320 ??
 
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N320 meters great in a 10X, but I have no clue about the Dillon measure and N320.

N310 and 3N37 meter even better, as they are smaller grained.

I find it curious that the Dillon meters W-231 great, but not the N320.
 
Wobbly,
You are an amazing individual sir. I truly appreciate your desire to help and willingness to go the distance.

I was going to send you a PM over on CZ, and was actually trying to solve a very annoying problem with one of my AR15's, and while searching for an answer (like I always do before I post a question) I just happened across this post !!!

I am the friend Wobbly is referring to, and here is what I have to report:

I installed the powder baffle sold by UniqueTek and loaded some VV N320 into the hopper. It took me nearly 60 (yes I counted them) pulls to get the powder measure to settle down @ 4.1 gr. and only deviate by .1 grains according to the Dillon electronic scale.

At that point I decided to load some rounds and check for consistency.
I loaded 30 rounds, then weighed a few drops. It never went below 3.9 grains and it went as high as 4.2 when I took a freshly sized, primed case that I used to zero the scale. I dropped, measured and dumped that case another 10 times and as long as I kept the tempo consistent it would settle down right at 4.1 grains, but if I walked away to the other bench and came back and repeated the process, it took at least 5 or 6 drops to settle back down to 4.1 grains.

This is very odd compared to my experience with the other powders Wobbly mentioned I have have perfect success with (WSF and 231).

I may try to polish the innards of the powder funnel area and see if that gives me more consistent drops with N320, but so far I am not happy with the consistency at all.

I loaded a total of 100 rounds and I am confident that my peak is at or below 4.2 grains, but I do not have much hope that this batch of 9mm is going to provide groups that are worth writing home about knowing they (probably) vary by as much as .4 grains.

If I cannot get N320 to drop closer to .1 grain variances, then I will throw in the towel on it for a while until I feel like spending the time to see if I can improve the system by polishing things up a bit.

I will also call Dillon and see what they have to say as Wobbly suggests and see if they have any suggestions.

Mr. Wobbly, again I salute you sir. You truly are an asset to these communities my friend. Thank you for trying to help!
 
Boogaloo said:
but if I walked away to the other bench and came back and repeated the process, it took at least 5 or 6 drops to settle back down

I don't know if this happens only with some specific powders but I have noticed this happens to me with Unique on my 650. Walk away, stop what your doing to refill primers or whatever for more than a minute or so and the next charge will be heavy, up to almost half a grain like you describe.
 
Something is wrong. I use both N320 and N310 and they are such fast powders that if you over charged by almost a half a grain (.4) you could run into problems. They both throw consistant inside .1 of a grain, enough so that I can throw ten charges and weigh inside .1 and adjust up or down to the hundreth of a grain (.01).
 
I have a good friend who uses N320 exclusively in probably >10k rounds a year on his 650, and has never mentioned anything at all like this. We chrono together, and if he was getting .4gr variation it would be very obvious in the numbers... safe to say something is bad wrong.
 
Well, that's my experience too. Nothing but perfect metering from 320 in the Dillon powder measure.

Like I told him.... It's time to call the hot line.
 
I know several people with Dillon Presses that shoot competitively with n320 and like it (one for 165gr 40 cal*?*).
Something is not aligned with Jupiter and Mars.
Call.
 
I use a Dillon 550 and N-320 meters very uniformly in my machine - variation is virtually unmeasureable as with WSF or W-231. With the flake powders such as HS-700X, American Slect or Red Dot I have found that it takes ca 10 drops to stabilize the drop weights after that the variation is less than 0.1 grain.
 
Hi all...
N320 is a powder I use in more rounds than any other powder and it meters just great in my Dillon PM's.
I would say it is time to call the hot line as well.

LGB
 
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