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Posted: 8/29/2013 9:37:22 PM EDT
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OK... I just officially decided I hate this machine.
Spent more time working on it and trying to keep it running than time actually making ammo. This is ridiculous 
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Quoted: OK... I just officially decided I hate this machine. Spent more time working on it and trying to keep it running than time actually making ammo. This is ridiculous I actually gave mine away here and bought a 550. 1911 Smith may come along and tell you how your mechanical skills are lacking. |
| I love mine, however I have to admit it can be a little nerve racking at times, when something gets a little out of alignment. I had a major issue with the primer feed system and ended up with 2 replacement part updates from Lee at no charge and it has been running great since then. |
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Quoted:
OK... I just officially decided I hate this machine. Spent more time working on it and trying to keep it running than time actually making ammo. This is ridiculous I had mine for a week and it went back. I then got a Hornady Lock-N-Load and had it for almost 18 months before I got tired of tinkering with it to make it run flawlessly. I now have a Dillon 650 and love it. Goes back to the saying, buy once, cry one. I've cried three times now. Could have saved a bunch of money had I just bought the Dillon to begin with...but no, I had to swim upstream. |
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I love mine. So far. Only reloaded @1000 rounds of .45 acp and 3000 rounds of 300 blackout with it, so not a whole lot of mileage. No broken parts yet. Probably just jinxed myself. I routinely fill the primer tray with only enough primers for the job and then wiggle and poke the last 3 or 4 down the chute to be picked up. Too lazy to keep the tray full and repackage unused primers.
I'm also a cheap SOB. Wife unit says i can squeeze 3 dimes from 1 quarter. I feel i got a good value for my $s anyway. |
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I have been using a Lee Loadmaster for about a year now and have loaded several thousand rounds to date. I currently only load .223 and 9mm - may add .40 S&W in the near future. For the money, I believe the Loadmaster is a great progressive press (I purchased mine from Titan Reloading with .223 dies for $219). The initial set-up and fine tuning must be properly done to make the press run smoothly. When I bought my Loadmaster, I researched several sites for set-up tips and tricks. If you have not visited loadmastervideos.com, I highly recommend spending some time on the site.
Caliber change is very simple if you buy a turret for each caliber/die set. I have my .223 dies and 9mm dies adjusted and set in their own turrets. The case feeder does require some minor tweaking when I switch between rifle and pistol. Total time to switch between calibers is less than 10 minutes. I also have two Lee Pro Auto-Disk Powder measures - one on each turret. There are better progressive presses available, but most start off at twice the price of the Loadmaster. Hell, one of my buddies has three Loadmasters set-up for 3 different calibers so he does not have to perform caliber changes. Just my experience and thoughts. |
When I was shopping for a press I did not hear alot of good things about the loadmaster. So I went with the Dillon. The biggest complaint I head was the same one you have. Too much time tinkering with it. Love Lee's classic cast but everything else is debatable. I'll keep my 550 with no issues, I love her. Put the loadmaster up for sale and regroup with blue. JMHO. 
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I did a lot of research back in 1994 or 1995 on progressive reloading machines. The finicky adjustment issues with the Loadmaster are the same now as they were then. Basically, if it's in adjustment and it's working, all is well. If not, it's a nightmare. Because 99.1% of everything I was shooting way back then was handgun, my wife (as a surprise) bought us a Dillon Square Deal. That was OK, and it was what my research had settled on, anyway. In retrospect, we should have popped for the extra money for the XL-650 because we added rifle calibers as the years passed. Hindsight and all that. The bottom line is that for a decade of loading literally more than 10,000 rounds (I lost count) of handgun ammunition with the Square Deal, I never had a minute's trouble with it. It was completely flawless. An utter joy to use and a great way to unwind after a rough day at work.
Fast forward to 2010. One of the parts wore out. It was a bearing on the primer stage assembly. I sent Dillion a quick note by snail mail with a picture and five bucks. I had no idea how much the part cost, and the machine was 15 years old. They sent me a new one. It was here in three days, because Dillon is just across town. A few weeks later, the press started acting funny. Not funny "ha ha" but funny "strange." So I stopped loading and made a close inspection. The back frame of the press had literally cracked and broken! So it was loose and wobbly. I removed it from my bench, put it into a box and on a day off, I took it to Dillon in Scottsdale. They were horrified. In the end, they rebuilt the entire press with a new frame, put in a few new wear parts, adjusted everything, and updated the spent primer collector. Then shipped it back to me, all at no charge! This on a 15 year old reloading press. I'm still handloading rifle ammunition on a single stage. When the time comes to upgrade, it'll be to a Dillon XL-650 or the larger machine. There is no question for me. 
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I've been reloading on my lee for about 3 months now.
To be honest I almost threw it out over frustration.... Specifically the priming system and the damn ball/chain powder mechanism. That being said, once I smoothed everything out and figured out what the hell I was doing, it now functions as expected. Now what I can say... I purchased it on a shoe-string budget to determine if reloading is my thing. I figured if I stick with reloading I can always upgrade. I honestly feel that if I can manage progressive reloading on this machine.... Anything else will be a gravy train. Best of luck and don't give up... There are some very good tutorial videos on youtube.com . Check them out. it may save you frustration. I literally just finished 60 work up loads using RL 10X. Not one issue. just watch videos on primer system on youtube. 
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| It is a little finicky at times but can still produce ammo with out any problems if you have the patience and time to make some small adjustments. I load 223, 300 blk, 45 acp, 40 sw, 9mm luger, and 38 spl all from the same loadmaster and can pump out ammo like a Dillon. Just keep a check on your primer system. |
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Well guys...I stripped the press down till there was nothing but the shell plate on...tinkered with the indexing rod till all was smooth and shell plate had no backlash.
I had to slam the ram arm forward to get it to index. Replaced every part on the press except the frame...ram and shell plate. Found out that light oil does NOT work for the index rod. Must be greased. Once I had grease on the flipper and index rod...it smoothed right out. Spent a lot of time adjusting the carrier....etc. For some reason the ram was dragging and just felt tight no matter how much oil I put on the ram...then I decided to check the spent primer door...found there was a 1/2 cup of spent primers in the hollow ram...dumped all those out and...shazam...the ram was smooth as butter. Don't. Axe me what that had to do with anything 
I can run the arm down and back up...and index the shell plate with one pinky with of effort. Now I'll start adding parts back on and see if I can keep it running..... I'm real worried about the primer system. Its only held in place by the shell holder and flops all over the place. I added some tape around the back where it fits down on the carrier....forcing it forward. Seems to firm things up some. Ill report more as I spend the weekend fooling with it. |
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Quoted:
Well guys...I stripped the press down till there was nothing but the shell plate on...tinkered with the indexing rod till all was smooth and shell plate had no backlash. I had to slam the ram arm forward to get it to index. Replaced every part on the press except the frame...ram and shell plate. Found out that light oil does NOT work for the index rod. Must be greased. Once I had grease on the flipper and index rod...it smoothed right out. Spent a lot of time adjusting the carrier....etc. For some reason the ram was dragging and just felt tight no matter how much oil I put on the ram...then I decided to check the spent primer door...found there was a 1/2 cup of spent primers in the hollow ram...dumped all those out and...shazam...the ram was smooth as butter. Don't. Axe me what that had to do with anything
I can run the arm down and back up...and index the shell plate with one pinky with of effort. Now I'll start adding parts back on and see if I can keep it running..... I'm real worried about the primer system. Its only held in place by the shell holder and flops all over the place. I added some tape around the back where it fits down on the carrier....forcing it forward. Seems to firm things up some. Ill report more as I spend the weekend fooling with it. I just gave up on the Priming system on press and went to a hand primer. Loadmaster works Perfect aside from the priming system. |
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I think the key to the Loadmaster is to run sized, deprimed and cleaned brass through it. This stops debris from dirty brass from falling into the priming system.
I also have a sizing die with the decapping pin removed in station 2. This lines the case up for more consistant priming. Mine runs pretty smooth and cranks rounds out faster than my friends 550. |
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I've found (on the Pro 1000 anyway) since I've got to tumble the lube off of rifle brass, it's easier to just size and deprime, tumble the lube off, hand prime, and them back to the press. It IS slower, but I do everything in large batches (like 2k) so I'm not really losing that much in productivity.
ka |
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Quoted:
Well guys...I stripped the press down till there was nothing but the shell plate on...tinkered with the indexing rod till all was smooth and shell plate had no backlash. I had to slam the ram arm forward to get it to index. Replaced every part on the press except the frame...ram and shell plate. Found out that light oil does NOT work for the index rod. Must be greased. Once I had grease on the flipper and index rod...it smoothed right out. Spent a lot of time adjusting the carrier....etc. For some reason the ram was dragging and just felt tight no matter how much oil I put on the ram...then I decided to check the spent primer door...found there was a 1/2 cup of spent primers in the hollow ram...dumped all those out and...shazam...the ram was smooth as butter. Don't. Axe me what that had to do with anything
I can run the arm down and back up...and index the shell plate with one pinky with of effort. Now I'll start adding parts back on and see if I can keep it running..... I'm real worried about the primer system. Its only held in place by the shell holder and flops all over the place. I added some tape around the back where it fits down on the carrier....forcing it forward. Seems to firm things up some. Ill report more as I spend the weekend fooling with it. It's a shame you have to tinker with something so much that SHOULD work right out of the box. |
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I've found that the priming system on the Lee presses can be finicky but they work. That being said, I do all my prep work off press. I deprime, clean, resize, trim, clean off lube and now hand prime. The addition of priming off press has added a little bit of time on the front end but it takes out all the extra time of fixing the messed up primers on press.
One of these days I will be able to afford to upgrade my presses but for now I am happy with what I can afford. Also, from what I have been reading lately , it seems that a lot of reloaders don't do all the reloading in one step, on the same press, at one time. By that I mean that it looks like short of the bad priming system most people are doing things in separate steps. Deprime and clean then resize, trim and all the other case work they choose to do THEN back on the press for prime, powder, bullet and crimp. YMMV and just my thoughts. |
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having both a LM and Pro1k, i have had little problems with them through the thousands of rounds I have loaded through them. Any problems were mostly adjustment problems, and using refernces off the net solves most of the them.
one thing i have found about the LM is that it has a preference for primers. Win/Magtech run almost 100% in mine. Tula, CCI and others, sometimes choke. I have, many times, 1k 9mm though mine with no problems other than crimped brass, and even with crimped brass, 50% of the time, they still load fine. Most problem with the LM is timing related. Check the index and adjust as needed. |
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