Bloop

I plan to motorize a 1050 in the next few months. I'm actually going to use an Arduino to control a 1600oz stepper motor as the drive. This is going to do two things for me; 1) allow me to have sensors on the case feeder, bullet feeder, primer tube, powder hopper and an indexing sensor 2) allow me to ramp the speed up and down throughout the cycle. With the sensors I will be able to stop the machine if any components run out or it doesn't index into the correct position at any time. With the ramping of the speed I can run really fast through 80% of the cycle and slow down for 10% before and after the indexing move. I honestly feel that with this configuration I can push beyond 1800 rounds per hour of 9mm.

I love the work that Forcht has done on the bottom of the 1050 to cam the cycle instead of a forward backward motion. I am not too sure if I am concerned about the swager functionality as he has masterfully solved. When I do get everything together for mine I plan to document the whole build and once it's working make everything freely available. I think that I can build the automation for roughly $600 based on $250 for the motor and controller from ebay, less than $50 for the Arduino and optical sensors and about $300 to cover the base/mount, sprockets/chain and small parts for the bottom of the press.

The whole key to my setup will be preparation. I have to be 100% sure that all of my cases are good to as in no 38 supers or 40's mixed in. I also have to be sure that I have tubes of primers ready to go. I sort all of my cases into two 100rd ammo containers to verify they are all 9mm and then put them into ziplock bags so I got the cases covered. I have an RF-100 primer filler that I will empty into a clear 5mm inner diameter acrylic tube and then transfer into regular Dillon primer tubes once I have verified all the primers are the correct orientation.

We'll see how it all goes once I get all the pieces put together.
 
I had looked at the arduino controls. The controller I have inputs for sensors based on +1.5v to a 3.5mm headphone jack You can mod the dillon powder check, primer level, and powder level sensor to work. Forcht sells one to work with the lee decapping die also. For my case I would consolidate all the sensors to the arduino and then just run a single output to the forcht controller. If you check on YouTube you can see lots of sensor options and not have to reinvent the wheel. I am interested in the laser based optical sensors to check mouth and case body along with ensuring projectiles are dropped by bullet feeder.
 
The arduino is great for this. It has 14 digital and 6 analog I/O ports. 6 of the digital's are used for the LCD screen. 2 analog for the control buttons. I need 2 more pins for the motor (direction and step) which leaves me 10 more I/O ports for sensors and such. It's not going to be the prettiest setup but functionally it should be damn good.
 
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