Making 9mm and 45acp casing

jwillmoore

jwillmoore

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Has anyone tried making his own 9mm and 45acp casings?

I am seriously thinking of making my own and I am wondering if anyone knows what is involved and what are the best machines out there?

Budget is not a problem I am looking for quality. A friend has suggested that I look into bimetal and brass. Anyone with first hand knowledge?
 
I REALLY wish, just once in my life, I could say, "Budget is not a problem". Just once...;)

Well, most of those making custom case are turning them on a machine lathe, you could too, although, I imagine that setup is a biatch.

Commercially, they are punched and drawn from sheet brass. I toyed with that idea years ago, but really could not justify the time to build the machinery and each punch, drawing die, press, forming dies, etc.

I would have to have something that would do 5 at a time in a single stage deal, 20ton pneumatic hydraulic press.

Punch out 50 disks. Set up next stage of drawing case length, do all 50.

Set up to punch for flash hole and primer pocket. Do all 50

Set up for uniforming case web and Swaging extractor groove. Do all 50.

Set up to develop body taper and neck. Do all 50.

Set up to trim to length. Do all 50.

If I went this far, I might as well uniform the case mouth on all 50.

Anneal brass do eliminate work hardening. Do all 50.

VERY TIME CONSUMING if you are doing an easily obtainable case. Something extremely exotic, maybe. But it will NEVER pay for itself and will only be of value if you have a brass supply and are looking for some sort of self-sufficiency. I am not there yet, so I will continue to buy/ pick up brass. But you, you knock yourself out and, PLEASE, let us know how you make out.

ETA: Sorry, re-read the post. When I was thinking this it was for rifle, hence my forming case taper, neck and shoulder step. Not needed in the pistol rounds...my bad.

Ted
 
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rookie wildcat said:
I REALLY wish, just once in my life, I could say, "Budget is not a problem". Just once...;)

Well, most of those making custom case are turning them on a machine lathe, you could too, although, I imagine that setup is a biatch.

Commercially, they are punched and drawn from sheet brass. I toyed with that idea years ago, but really could not justify the time to build the machinery and each punch, drawing die, press, forming dies, etc.

I would have to have something that would do 5 at a time in a single stage deal, 20ton pneumatic hydraulic press.

Punch out 50 disks. Set up next stage of drawing case length, do all 50.

Set up to punch for flash hole and primer pocket. Do all 50

Set up for uniforming case web and Swaging extractor groove. Do all 50.

Set up to develop body taper and neck. Do all 50.

Set up to trim to length. Do all 50.

If I went this far, I might as well uniform the case mouth on all 50.

Anneal brass do eliminate work hardening. Do all 50.

VERY TIME CONSUMING if you are doing an easily obtainable case. Something extremely exotic, maybe. But it will NEVER pay for itself and will only be of value if you have a brass supply and are looking for some sort of self-sufficiency. I am not there yet, so I will continue to buy/ pick up brass. But you, you knock yourself out and, PLEASE, let us know how you make out.

ETA: Sorry, re-read the post. When I was thinking this it was for rifle, hence my forming case taper, neck and shoulder step. Not needed in the pistol rounds...my bad.

Ted
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You would be doing alot more annealing then just once.

I seem to recall a thread a while back and someone thought of using a cnc machine which will work, but for some reason the cases are weaker.

Buy brass in bulk.
 
"...Budget is not a problem..." Will be when you find out how much a brass drawing machine costs.
"...someone thought of using a cnc machine..." Huge waste of time and money.
 
Want to make a quality 45ACP case? Grab a Lapua 308 case and your case trimmer and have at it... should take about 45mins of turning to get it down to size. :p

If you can shoot sub MOA with your pistol freehand, then look into better brass 'else you're wasting your time IMHO.
 
Trinimon said:
Want to make a quality 45ACP case? Grab a Lapua 308 case and your case trimmer and have at it... should take about 45mins of turning to get it down to size. :p

If you can shoot sub MOA with your pistol freehand, then look into better brass 'else you're wasting your time IMHO.
Click to expand...

Not very practical now is it
 
Op....what exactly is your motivation in this project? If it's not higher quality or better accuracy, can't imagine why you'd want to do this. Are you looking to make a cottage industry business out of it? Seriously, you could buy more LOADED ammo than you could shoot in a lifetime, for the cost of the equipment and raw materials to make just the brass. I'm all for weird projects and wildcats etc, but I'm afraid I can see no benefits from making your own brass. I would suggest you contact one of the major manufacturers and arrange a tour of their facility to see exactly what is involved in this process. It would be very interesting and informative, and give you a good idea of just what's involved in the manufacture of quality pistol brass. We complain about the cost of it but really, once you see what's involved in the making of it, I think it might change your mind. I'm all for knowledge and the quest for more, and like you, cost isn't a big factor to me, but, were I you I might be interested in developing cases from a better alloy, more suited to higher pressures or some such project rather than getting into something that many major players, as well as many specialty boutique operations, are already doing, very well.
 
jwillmoore said:
Not very practical now is it
Click to expand...

The machinery, installation and tooling you need could could easily run you over 100000$....................il say it again a hundred thousand dollars, and you would be loading each station by hand most likely. Cost is going to be a tradeoff with speed and the absolute cheapest setup I could imagine where you loaded and stripped each station by hand would be so exasperatingly slow theres no way anyone would do it for more then 50 shells.

Machining a brass case in any quantity is a huge waste, and the case is off lesser quality then a drawn one, so I wont even recommend it.

jwillmoore said:
Budget is not a problem I am looking for quality. A friend has suggested that I look into bimetal and brass. Anyone with first hand knowledge?
Click to expand...


You say money is no object, but frankly, if you know this little about deep drawing I know you cant afford it. If you could, you'd have an engineer working for you right now and wouldn't be asking us. For the life of me your questions make no sense at all, but if you CAN afford the machinery and are that foolish to waste it on pistol rounds, there is some wierd catch somewhere.

Why are you so reluctant to purchase some of the cheapest size of brass made, from manufactures you will not be able to compete with in cost or quality? And why are you willing to waste this huge pile of money on this scheme that wont get you one dime of profit?
 
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When you google brass drawing machine and don't see any price, this is usually a bad sign. Just buy your brass from Starline, it's top notch product.
 
you can normally get buckets of 9mm and .45 acp for next to nothing

even if I was going to make a very odd cal id first machine the base and tube and use a set of forming dies to form the tube im talking things that cant be had like 14.5x114 russain
 
If the object is high quality brass for super accurate ammo, the usual process it to buy quality brass (say LAPUA) the sort it by weight, then sort it by neck uniformity, etc. This would make sense for benchrest and/or FClass.

For pistol? Either there is a catch or you are so ignorant that you don't know that you don't know. No harm in that. Ask a question here and you will probably learn something.
 
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