Upgrading my press

In the link I posted above I read that Dillon has updated the 650 to provide grease fittings on the link arms. My 650 is 10+ years old and doesn't have these so I ordered the them and the grease fittings from Dillon 2016-12-02. The link arm pins were US$37.50, the grease fittings were US$10, shipping was US$ 23.50.

The package arrived today 2016-12-12 and looking at the invoice Dillon provided a discount of $37.50, equal to the cost of the pins.

Free upgrade parts for a 10+ year old press and fast service, hard to beat Dillon for product & customer support.
 
On the debate I'm seeing here about the Dillon 550b vs 650.

A 650 is a LOVELY press. And there's no doubt at all that it will produce ammo at a faster rate. Especially when equipped with case and bullet feeders.

But do we NEED that sort of production rate? Two questions that will point to this. One is how much per month do you shoot? The second is how much time can you devote to pulling the lever and feeding the hoppers?

Some folks may not shoot a whole lot of ammo per month. But perhaps family time prevents them from having as much time to spend on reloading so a machine that maximizes their production per hour might be the only way to keep up. Other's might have the time and easily get away with what a 550b can provide. Each of us has to figure out where all this fits in.

At a fairly pleasant rate I can produce handgun ammo on my 550b at just a hair under 400/hr after the initial set up and testing of the first couple of loads. This rate per hour includes hand placing the cases and bullets and stopping after each hundred pulls to pickup a pack of primers and transfer to the primer tube.

Now a 650 with a powered case collimator and feeder along with a bullet feeder might jump that up to double the rounds per hour. But at a rather significant increase in equipment cost and time for conversions between calibers.

All of this all needs to be considered for picking the right tool for the job. Each is the right answer to the right sort of home situation.

I know that I really like my 550b. But I'm not married to it. I've considered swapping up to a 650. But each time I consider it I feel like to really make the upgrade worth while that I'd have to opt for the big case feeder/collimator that makes a lot of noise to really make it all that much faster. And then the conversion kits and die carrier plates all cost more and on and on. And in the end I've easily got enough spare time to use to keep up with my needs. So I still have the 550b and I'm happy with it. For ME it was and still is the right answer. I would gain nothing but more cost and complexity by "cross grading" to a 650. But that's me and my situation. Each of us needs to look at their own situation.
 
That why I liked the Hornady LNL AP. It does what the Dillon 650 does at a much lower initial price and lower costs per each caliber change follow up.
Bullet and case feed are not justified for my use, but nice to know it is possible if I ever win a lottery. :)
Extras like the pistol powder cylinder and micrometer adjuster enable me to accurately throw my 2.0 Titegroup load .32 wadcutter loads for my Walther GSP and go past the 44 mag load with ease.

It's the primer tubes that take time. May break down and get the Lock-N-Load® 1911 Auto Primer Tube Filler to save time.
 
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diopter said:
That why I liked the Hornady LNL AP. It does what the Dillon 650 does at a much lower initial price and lower costs per each caliber change follow up.
Bullet and case feed are not justified for my use, but nice to know it is possible if I ever win a lottery. :)
Extras like the pistol powder cylinder and micrometer adjuster enable me to accurately throw my 2.0 Titegroup load .32 wadcutter loads for my Walther GSP and go past the 44 mag load with ease.

It's the primer tubes that take time. May break down and get the Lock-N-Load® 1911 Auto Primer Tube Filler to save time.
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Ditto. I did the math when I was looking for a progressive press and it was hard to pass ignore the Hornady LNL AP. The added conversion plate just makes adding new calibers almost 2x as expensive vs only needing dies. The 550 got my attention for the price until I found out that I had to manually index the base for each stage. No doubt, if I had the $$, I'd have a 650 in my basement.
 
Went with HDY LNL, does the job nicely.
Build my own case feeder using UHMW Polyethylene and LEE case collator for <50 bucks. Find it distracting to have to case and bullet feed but with case auto, feeding bullet as I eye ball check for powder goes hand in hand.
 
I'm a Hornady fan. I like their stuff, I still run their single stage press for larger rifle rounds and it's great.
When I started reloading I bought a Hornady LnL AP press with case feeder. It was not a wise decision. I even researched it and knew there was going to be some issues.. but I thought i'd plow through them for the sake of saving some money. I understand presses need to be 'tinkered with', i'm an engineer by my first trade so I have a real good grasp on how things work, indexing, etc.
The Hornady press was not fun to keep up and running. Constant issues with the case feeder and I ended up selling it locally and getting a 650XL about 2.5 years ago. While it still has some quirks getting setup, like powder spillage and whatnot, the dealers and Dillon are excellent to deal with to get things resolved. I don't know if the Dillon support staff are all reloaders, but by god you give them a symptom and they know how to fix it off the top of their head (and not reading a screen like the Hornady folks).

The saying 'buy once cry once' definitely applies with reloading presses.
 
I'm sure the cost difference between a Lee or a Hornady and a Dillon are a significant "deal breaker" factor to some but if you can afford the Dillon, the end result isn't much of a factor.

I started my progressive press experience with a Lee Loadmaster...like a lot of others, I thought I "couldn't justify the Dillon cost" so went that route...after many many frustrating issues with the continuous unreliability of the priming mechanism I lost patience and bought a brand new 650, and since, a used 650 and 550.

Here's were the rubber hits the road in comparing the end results of owning both. When I bought the Loadmaster it was delivered to my door in Edmonton direct from Lee for $ 350
Can. all in . When I bought the first new 650 with case feeder it landed for $1200 Can. The used 650 (plain press with one caliber set-up)was $ 600 and the used 550 was $400 .

When I sold the Lee (after carrying it to a # of gun shows) I got $200 out of it, a loss of $150. I ended up selling the two used Dillons as well... I added a case loader to the 650 and sold it with a couple conversions that I had somehow doubled up on, I had a total of just under $1000 in it and got $1000 out of it in the first 20 minutes of the first show. The 550 that I had $400 in sold for 450 about a 1/2 hr later at the same show.

So as you can see Quality costs initially more but in the long run after you are done with it unless you abuse the hell out of it, it is a better investment.
 
Fingers nailed it. The nice thing is Dillon guarantees their presses no matter who owns them and when they were bought. They are as good as the owners claim they are.

Take Care

Bob
 
SoylentD said:
When I started reloading I bought a Hornady LnL AP press with case feeder. It was not a wise decision... The Hornady press was not fun to keep up and running.
Click to expand...

^What he said. I bought the LnL AP because I was curious; and the 650 is a trifle pricy. It works just fine, but it needs frequent tweaks and you've got to watch it - and it's given me a couple no-powder loads when I didn't watch it. The primer feed is part Mickey Mouse, part Rube Goldberg and it initially gave a LOT of trouble; Hornady replaced the large primer feed slider and it's been a lot better since, but you MUST keep the press clean or powder grains will foul the slider and then good luck. Heaven help you if you forget to seat a primer with fine powder!!! Oh and, get a couple spare springs that go around the cartridge plate (I really like how easy it is to get cases in/out of the press, thanks to this spring) and have some spare plastic arms that hold the top of the primer slider guide rod. Trust me...

I'm sticking with it; don't shoot enough to make it worth replacing, and it's given us many thousand rounds of good ammo. You've gotta watch it, but I like how fast it is to switch calibres. Often wish I'd got a Dillon tho'
 
Stoning the edges of the primer feed slide works wonder. Look up LNL tips and tricks on Youtube.

Replaced the Cam wire.
392227 ASSEMBLY BREAKAWAY CAM WIRE QTY 1 $.00 EA
 
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