PsychoKnight
Member
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2006
- Messages
- 97
From Hornady 7/18/2007 to another member
I'm thinking they can use a Lee-type bullet feeder mechanism, but in reverse. Instead of placing bullets, the tuning-fork fingers grab the loaded round off the shellplate.
Alternatively, they can change to a full 72 deg rotation like other presses and incorporate a ratching arm under the plate that pulls on a gas-charged or hydraulic valve (like absorbers used to slowly close doors) to smooth out jerky acceleration. Full rotation will allow proven and conventional ejection methods.
Either solution will raise production costs of the press, but what's the point of being competitively priced if you can't compete due to ongoing and aggravating problems? For now, they should at least include in all their advertising and catalog descriptions, which are copied onto retail vendor's info, a disclaimer about 25acp/380acp/9mm problems with this press. With fair warning, people can make an informed decision on whether this press is appropriate for their needs.
I keep reading about people who have become accustomed to disengaging the ejection wire and removing the loaded round by hand. That's okay if you knew this would be the situation before buying the press. Its not okay to find out after committing to the press financially and psychologically.
Sorry we couldn't get your press to satisfy your needs.
Below are some comments from the engineering dept.
Being in engineering, I'm not directly involved with the Customer
Service issues but hopefully I can shed some light as to why the Eject
Wire is the way it is and options available. All of the way through its evolution, the Hornady LNL AP has had half indexing. That is, indexing 36 degrees both on the up and the down
stroke of the ram. This makes for very smooth transfer and far fewer problems than those associated with a more aggressive 72 degree transfer, such as powder spillage.
The trade off is we have a very short window of rotation to eject the
loaded round. The eject wire works best if it is in very close proximity to the loaded round the moment the shell plate starts to rotate. The shell must be gone by the time the shell plate has rotated far enough to receive another case, and it cannot impede the loading of the new case. (About 12 degrees of rotation depending on the diameter of the case.) This of course caused us to encroach in the die area at that station.
The problem is more significant with small diameter short cases than it is with longer and larger ones. Additionally, there are some
competitors' dies that work better than others. When we went with this design on the eject wire, the first thing we did was to change all of our taper crimp dies to accommodate it, basically moving the tapered section closer to the mouth of the die. Also, we have modified the contours on the shell plate to make easier extraction and we have introduced a Powder drop thru expander to allow the user to move the dies back one station.
Regrettably, there are still incidences at that station, notably with
the very short pistol rounds and we are looking for ways to eliminate
them There are other ways to eject the loaded round in the index time frame, but I am not aware of a way to do it without significantly raising the price to all our customers.
I'm thinking they can use a Lee-type bullet feeder mechanism, but in reverse. Instead of placing bullets, the tuning-fork fingers grab the loaded round off the shellplate.
Alternatively, they can change to a full 72 deg rotation like other presses and incorporate a ratching arm under the plate that pulls on a gas-charged or hydraulic valve (like absorbers used to slowly close doors) to smooth out jerky acceleration. Full rotation will allow proven and conventional ejection methods.
Either solution will raise production costs of the press, but what's the point of being competitively priced if you can't compete due to ongoing and aggravating problems? For now, they should at least include in all their advertising and catalog descriptions, which are copied onto retail vendor's info, a disclaimer about 25acp/380acp/9mm problems with this press. With fair warning, people can make an informed decision on whether this press is appropriate for their needs.
I keep reading about people who have become accustomed to disengaging the ejection wire and removing the loaded round by hand. That's okay if you knew this would be the situation before buying the press. Its not okay to find out after committing to the press financially and psychologically.