Lee Loadmaster Priming Upgrade?

[wally]

Have you seen Mike's mod video?

Its a nice video and maybe a solution if reloading 9mm, but its also proof as to how poor the Loadmaster priming system design really is. They need to figure out how to modify it to prime at the bottom of the stoke like everyone else does.

Straight off the top seating the primer at the top of the stoke is a bad idea. The mechanical advantage is greatest and thus gives very little "feel" when seating the primer and the high mechanical advantage crushes things before you can react. With my Dillon or Lee Classic Turret they seat at the bottom of the stroke when the mechanical advantage is minimum so when things go wrong (.45ACP SP case, cockeyed case, crimped primer, etc.) its obvious quickly enough by feel to be able to stop and correct the issue without crushing anything.

 

[jmorris]

Straight off the top seating the primer at the top of the stoke is a bad idea.

Yeah, you never get to start "high primer" threads. I actually think the positive depth of top stroke seating is a real bonus it is just better executed on the Dillon 1050 where it has a swage station prior to priming that takes care of cases that would have problems on any other machine.

If you know you don't have any crimped brass going into a loadmaster the actual priming system is not where issues arise, rather the system that moves primers from the tray over the anvil and it would be a problem no matter what part of the stroke the primer was pushed into the pocket, if it's not working right.

It would actually be a step backwards on the LM, if it primed at the bottom there would be no way to locate a 9mm case correctly over the incoming primer.

 

[kingmt]

I like it. I can feel just fine. I even prime on top of my press when I'm using single stage. It goes in with a passive stop & I know it is there.

 

[wally]

It would actually be a step backwards on the LM, if it primed at the bottom there would be no way to locate a 9mm case correctly over the incoming primer.

I assume you are referring to the "trick" of also having a die in station two to "center" the case. Well, I wouldn't call the shell holder of the Loadmaster one of its strengths either!

 

[DanLee]

I bought a Loadmaster when they first came out and quickly gave up on the priming system. I prefer to hand prime anyway as it gives me a chance to inspect the deprimed and cleaned case. How is the new system different from the original?

 

[wally]

How is the new system different from the original?

As far as I can tell it "wraps" around the primer more as it swings out and "cams" a bit as the primer push rod moves up helping to center it in the shell holder. The primer push rod is also different, a photo earlier in the thread shows it better than I can describe.

Haven't loaded enough rounds to be sure its really fixed, but so far no flips, "smilies", or crushed sideways primers. I did have one no-prime -- I was running the reservoir below the joint to remove it to add more primers and seem to have gone a bit too far. I've loaded enough rounds to have expected half a dozen or more ruined primers with the original system. So far so good.

 

[jmorris]

So far so good.

That was the difference between them for me. One worked and the other didn't.

I am not exactly sure how much of it was the new design or just the plastic worn out where it contacts the nubs on the press that agitate the system to keep primers doing what they should be doing.

The old one just didn't have the same "bounce" over them that the new one did.

 

[Wreck-n-Crew]

I'm interested in the 6S shell plate and using with 9mm. Are the 9mm tight or do they fit loose enough for use? I'm seriously considering putting an order in. Amazon and Midway are out of stock. It looks like Titan may have them.

They work great. Not too tight and fit like it shouild. don't know why they didn't recommend it for 9mm in the first place!

Edit to add: The 6s improved priming well. Add a 9mm Resizing die in the slot above the prime station with the decapping pin removed for better alignment if you want but I took mine out. just added more pressure on the hand and didn't solve anything the 6S didn't already solve.

 

[wally]

They work great. Not too tight and fit like it shouild. don't know why they didn't recommend it for 9mm in the first place!

mike's mod video suggests you need to grind the top of the five stations so the case rests on the bottom instead of the extraction groove. Has Lee modified them to do this now?

 

[jmorris]

don't know why they didn't recommend it for 9mm in the first place!

The 32/20 and 25/20 have thicker rims?

 

[Tilos]

Its a nice video and maybe a solution if reloading 9mm, but its also proof as to how poor the Loadmaster priming system design really is. They need to figure out how to modify it to prime at the bottom of the stoke like everyone else does.

Straight off the top seating the primer at the top of the stoke is a bad idea. The mechanical advantage is greatest and thus gives very little "feel" when seating the primer and the high mechanical advantage crushes things before you can react. With my Dillon or Lee Classic Turret they seat at the bottom of the stroke when the mechanical advantage is minimum so when things go wrong (.45ACP SP case, cockeyed case, crimped primer, etc.) its obvious quickly enough by feel to be able to stop and correct the issue without crushing anything.

Yes, the priming at the top affectively turns the load-master into a FOUR station progressive
Lee uses the twisted center rod for indexing and priming at the bottom on other presses, why not redesign the loadmaster that way.
Then the 2nd station could be used for a case activated powder drop/case expand.
I'd buy one tomorrow...
just sayin'

 

[kingmt]

Yes, the priming at the top, affectively turns the load-master into a FOUR station progressive

You could always put your powder charge station there. It could lead to some exciting reloading. By the way that is a joke.

 

[Wreck-n-Crew]

The 32/20 and 25/20 have thicker rims?

Not sure but the 19s is sloppy and the 6S lines up better.

mike's mod video suggests you need to grind the top of the five stations so the case rests on the bottom instead of the extraction groove. Has Lee modified them to do this now?

I don't believe mine has been Modified a all. but I do have to adjust the primer seating depth adjustment when moving from 10mm LPP to 9mm SPP.

 

[wally]

I've loaded a bit over 350 rounds and have had two "no primer" and one "smile". The no primers aren't much of an issue as they are easy to fix and don't waste components. With the first generation priming system I'd typically expect between 14-20 smiles or sideways crushed primers or upside down primers in this many rounds. While this is still a much higher screwup rate than either of my Dillons, its tolerable, so I won't have to spend ~$200 for the Dillon conversion and switch back and forth to reload 9mm & .40S&W. I've only got about 10K .40S&W bullets in my retirement stash and never really planed to buy any more.

I doubt I'm going to bother with trying to get the case feeder working again, manually feeding the cases seems every bit as fast considering the time it takes to fill the tubes and stop rotate them as they empty. I seem to get a better rhythm going without having to stop and rotate the case feeder tubes ever 25 rounds or there abouts. I'll just need to remember not to run out of primers -- I do miss the alarm on the Dillon, but not having to fill the Dillon primer tubes is a step I'm happy to skip.

I didn't do anything else to the press other than replace the gen 1 priming system with the gen 3 and verify that the shell plate centering was correct. Thanks for all the good info and suggestions in this thread.

So if you are having issues with your Loadmaster primer system, use the link towards the top of the thread to see if you've got an old priming system and if so IMHO its worth replacing it with the gen 3 model.

 

[Load Master]

Wally, it is good to hear that you have your primer system working better. I know you are okay with hand feeding your cases, if that is what you prefer to do. They key things to having the case feed system work really well, is the height of the feed above the case pusher and how far back the case pusher travels. If you would like to see the case system in operation you are welcome to stop by my Youtube page where I have examples of the Lee Load Master loading a number of cals. You can visit it at this LINK

My latest video shows changes I made to my case feed system to allow a larger number of .223Rem cases. It includes adding longer tubes and an aftermarket collator. The details can be found in the comment below the video.

 

[kingmt]

I can't to the same conclusion that it's faster to hand free cases. I used to be able to feel when 380 slipped in also. I haven't loaded 9mm in a while so u don't know if I still can or not. The only time I like the case feeders I'd when someone is helping me & filling them.

 

[wally]

When I hand feed the cases I do use the slider -- I just manually put a case on the rail and push the feeder in and out. Can be really fast and sloppy putting the case on the rail the slider centers it nicely. Much faster that putting them in and out of my Lee Classic Turret that I use for small volume, frequent caliber changes.

I did have the case feeder working well for a while, but looks like I also had a generation one crank slider with a "softer" plastic that deformed and stopped moving correctly. It was black plastic that eventually deformed badly where the crank hits the upper end to reverse direction. The replacement is like the one in LoadMaster's photo, gray plastic.

 

[wally]

I've loaded over 1000 rounds now, so my statistics are a bit better:

4 no prime
1 smile
1 crushed, sideways primer
1 royal screw up. Not sure what happened but the plate wouldn't advance at the bottom of the stroke, nothing seemed amiss at the top of the stroke. I emptied the pipeline except I couldn't remove the case in the priming station. When I removed the shell plate, I saw a mangled primer (I assumed it was live, but it could have been one that didn't completely drop and dragged into the priming station. It was preventing the priming pin from dropping which prevented the shell holder from rotating. Cleaning this up and reassembling everything has been fine since -- that was 3-400 rounds ago.

With the original Gen 1 primer system I'd have been thrilled to have "only" these failures in 100 rounds.

Basically a happy camper now!

 

[rodregier]

Ideally Lee would design and release a new Loadmaster shellplate for 9mmx19 that doesn't
have the .40 S&W slop factored into the compromise 19S model.

Since that has yet to happen I have a 6S shellplate on order to mod for 9mmx19 usage.
Fortunately shellplates are not a wear item.

 

[jmorris]

There are some that feel the old style "5 post" LM shell plates,

Work better than the "new" style.

Others report that they don't have any issues except the new ones are around an 1/8" thicker.

 

[wally]

I've loaded over 1000 rounds now, so my statistics are a bit better:

4 no prime
1 smile
1 crushed, sideways primer
1 royal screw up. Not sure what happened but the plate wouldn't advance at the bottom of the stroke, nothing seemed amiss at the top of the stroke. I emptied the pipeline except I couldn't remove the case in the priming station. When I removed the shell plate, I saw a mangled primer (I assumed it was live, but it could have been one that didn't completely drop and dragged into the priming station. It was preventing the priming pin from dropping which prevented the shell holder from rotating. Cleaning this up and reassembling everything has been fine since -- that was 3-400 rounds ago.

With the original Gen 1 primer system I'd have been thrilled to have "only" these failures in 100 rounds.

Basically a happy camper now!

Well, this happiness sure didn't last very long.
I had one more no primer round which I discovered while loading magazines in the inital ~1400 rounds that had slipped through moving from the catch bin to my ammo storage can, so the total was five instead of four no primer. IF that was all, I'd not be posting this.

Seems the "royal screw-up" was a harbinger of things to come

After loading ~400 more rounds, thinking it was clear sailing with the Loadmaster, things went downhill fast. Couldn't go more than 20-30 rounds without a primer system failure -- crushed, sideways, upside down, or royal screw-up.

The crushed, sideway, and upside down failures just waste components, which is frustrating enough. But the royal screw-ups waste a large amount of time removing the cases from the pipeline and removing the shell plate. After about a dozen more of these I'm ready to take the stupid thing out and blow it up with Tannerite, I'll be sure to video it for youTube!

I don't see how a solution is possible, if the Gen 3 priming system is worn out after this few rounds, its definitely time to junk the Loadmaster.


I removed the tool head and manually pushed the primer arm at the bottom and fed through 100 primers, removing each one from the priming pin at the top of the stoke. I had the following failures:

# - failure type
2 - Upside-Down -- self explanatory, but I do not understand how it happens -- I could see the brass colored anvil or red primer compound every time I pushed the primer arm at the bottom of the stroke, but still two ended up on top of the pin upside-down.


1 - Off Track -- this seems to be the royal screw-up as the primer wedges in between the primer pin and the primer arm. When I remove the shell plate on these the primer pin "snaps" back down and the mangled primer generally flies up and into the center tube.I've a photo attached.

Without a case the primer flips up and the primer pin retracts as I lower the ram.


3 - Sideways -- likely an upside-down that only got half ways there.


2 - Too Far In -- These are scary and most likely to be the ones that detonate. The primer somehow is pushed beyond the inside edge of the pin and hangs on the inside lip of the shell plate as the pin rises.


I just don't see any possibility of a fix at this point as it now seems as bad as my original Gen 1 priming system was after less than 2000 rounds loaded

So before I give this thing a starring role in a "hold my beer and watch this" youTube video, anybody got a clue I've somehow overlooked as to how I might solve these issues?

I labeled all the shell holder locations and the failures seemed uniformly distributed (the one in the photo was the first failure at #3, locations #2 & #4 had previously different failures). Never did the primer rod look the least bit off-center.

 

[wally]

I've junked the press, and have loaded over 5000 rounds without priming issues on my Dillon XL650 after spending about $200 for the "quick change" tool head, powder measure, and caliber conversion parts.

But I've more photos of the issues:

Here is the "Too Far In" problem, this is likely how one detonated in my original Gen 1 priming system:



Here is the wear I noticed on the primer push pin after the Gen 3 system started messing up, note the wear in the sides of the bottom cylinder:




Here are some of the primer screw-ups in loaded rounds when the new Gen 1 system I had on hand started screwing up after a couple hundred rounds, after which I threw in the towel:



At this point the extra space on the bench I gained since junking it has been well worthwhile.

 

[Load Master]

I've junked the press, and have loaded over 5000 rounds without priming issues on my Dillon XL650 after spending about $200 for the "quick change" tool head, powder measure, and caliber conversion parts.

Wally, I'm glad you have something that works for you. Too bad that you "junked the press". There are some folks like myself that will take them and refurbish them with the latest parts. The photos you provided shows very old parts that are extremely worn. Not much different than running a car on worn out tires and expecting not to have a flat. Replacing the worn out parts would have given you a good usable press.

Just an added note, the Dillon XL650 of about the same age as the parts you show for the Lee Load Master have been updated to newer design parts too. My reason for pointing this out, if you have an old XL650 with the original priming parts and worn as much as the ones in your photo, you would have priming issues on the XL650 too.

Like any piece of machinery, there is maintenance, lube and replacement of worn parts to keep them running, no matter what color they are.

Happy reloading!

 

[wally]

The photo of the push pin wasn't an old one, it was from the Gen 3 replacement priming system after less than 2000 rounds loaded. The original (that had a chunk blown out of the pin from the detonation) showed no such wear on the body.

I gave the press to a friend and shooting buddy who runs a 3-D printing company, maybe he can figure out what is causing the more or less random primer presentations and print up a solution.

 

[Zendude]

Dang. After reading this and the problems with the priming system on the RCBS progressives, I think I will stick with the Lee 1000.