Dillon 550 press

twig_40

twig_40

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Good day gentlemen, I have a question for Dillon press owners.

Last night I was reloading some .224 50 grn Fmj's using Winchester 748 as my powder. I have had this happen with stuff like Imr 4895 ( stick powder) but never with the 748. I was reloading and noticed that the powder dispenser was dropping/ spilling some powder. Not that big of a deal but it was slowly making a mess. Has anyone had this happen to them? Is a little bit of spillage normal? If it is not normal how do you fix it?

The only thing I can think of is that I might not have the powder die set up quite right. Except this just started, so it has me a little confused. The press is about three years old.
 
I am not familiar with that powder but it sounds like it is bridging as often happens with stick powders in the Dillon powder measure. I gave up trying to use the Dillon Powder mesure using stick powders and have gone to dipping and weighing each case.

Take Care

Bob
 
Might not be spillage like you think, I've had this happen WITHOUT a powder dispenser actually in the press (doing rifle rounds I manually put the powder in each casing)

What I discovered is that my indexing wheel was set in too tightly. When I indexed, the casing was brought to the next stage with too much force so the powder was knocked inside the casing and some even came out.
the problem becomes much mroe evident when you load straight walled cartridges, the opening is much bigger

Something to thinker...
 
I always make sure that my shellplate is properly tighten so this is not the issue. I called Dillon and I got the following answer:

Re adjust my fail-safe rod. With an empty shell plate, push the lever forward completely and screw the blue butterfly knob to the max. Then unscrew 1 full turn.

I will definetly check that as soon as I'll come back from work.
 
I think that leakage with ball powders is normal to some extent with measures that use a sliding charge bar. My 550 isn't bad loading pistol cartridges with the regular charge bar, but the leakage is more noticeable using the large charge bar for rifle ammo.
 
Same thing happened to me a while ago. I took the powder bar out and let it soak in acetone for about 10 min and brushed with and old tooth brush, rinsed with alcohol and all has been great since.
 
Sliding-bar measures leak with fine ball powder. Your options are to a) switch to a short stick powder b) switch to a slightly larger ball powder c) use a rotary measure (hornady, rcbs) d) live with it.

You could also try several different charge bars. They will have slightly different sizes due to manufacturing variance and one may leak a bit less.

With extremely fine powders (eg., 4100) you may experience jams.
 
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