I believe you can slightly chamfer the primer hole.  A slight (0.010 - 0.015) chamfer will allow the primer that is hanging up the slide to not catch on the lip of the slide.  I had to do this to the large primer slide on mine and have not had a single hang up since.

I very lightly chamfered the hole in the SP shuttle. So far no problems feeding primers from the tube.

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

Got my shims today. I didn't have the proper tools to measure so it took 4 tries to get it just right. Ended up only needing  .004"
Had to raise both pawls just a hair.

Man is it ever smooth now. Used to toss powder like crazy now the shellplate holds the same speed between index points. No little snap at the end

Great thread

My shims are coming today and I can't wait to fix this.  I always figured that I had just messed up the adjustment of the pawls on the press. Maybe I won't hate the primer seater if it's not getting jammed up with powder all the time.

My priming has been flawless since doing the shim work.

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

After the fix I filled a 9mm case to the top with powder and cycled the press and not a single grain spilled. You should be GTG once you shim

This may have been answered already, but what is the best way to get an accurate measurement of my sub plate using a set of calipers? I don't have a depth gauge.

Without specialty tools the easiest way is probably to slip a feeler gauge between the shel plate and sub plate.  I just kind guessed and it took 3 tries to get it just right.
The measurement you get doesn't translate exactly to the shim size so it's not really that important to get an accurate measurement IMHO

Thanks for the reply. My concern was more along the lines of "how do I get a square measurement". But after reading on his thread some more I guess if my measurements are off a thou or two then I can just play with it till it's right.

It is somewhat hit and miss no matter what. My four shellplates all have a slightly different feel to them. If you have multiple shellplates then you will need to shim for the "tightest" one.

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

My shims just came in today. Gonna mess around with it this weekend. I'll report back once installed.

Put me down for extremely satisfied, OP.

I finally installed mine this weekend. While I haven't noticed any improvement in smoothness (haven't run any pistol cals yet), I noticed a HUGE improvement in the 5th position case tilting. I ran about 250 Missouri cast 300 BO rounds today. Prior to this fix, almost every one would hit the FCD on 5th step. Today, not one of the 250 rounds hit the FCD.

Huge applause!

I might have to try this. I don't have any issues with pistol at all but I've got some rifle loads that are compressed which really slow me down.

Another cause for case tilt on station 5 can be that the sub plate is machined a little to far back and the case retainer spring will drop below the case rim . If that is the case you can add a small amount of material like JB weld to hold the spring up a little more. I didn't have any tilt issues but I saw a thread somewhere on it.

I will keep that in mind. I was so mad about the tilting on these cast 300 BO's that I called Hornady. They basically told me they coudn't ensure all non-Hornady die would work for all calibers. I was not impressed with that answer since it wasn't just this example that I was mad about. This extremely skiny top heavy caliber round is just the worst I had come up with so far. Hornady DID offer to take the shellplate back for measurements to verify it's in spec. I just didn't want to lose my 223 plate for that long..

Anyway. it was a happy reloading day!

I want to thanks TZ250 for his excellent write up and diagnosis. I have not loaded pistol rounds on my press yet. I have only been loading .223 on it. I bought it about 6-8 months ago. Was starting to think I should have bought the Dillon.

I was getting annoyed by 2 things.

1. When the plate advances to the next station the cases would wobble and powder will spill. A couple of balls each case. Since I am only loading plinking ammo I was not super concerned by the 2-3 balls of powder but it was annoying because I was constantly cleaning powder off the press.

2. The priming system was not working well at all. When it did put in a primer it would not seat fully. Sometimes it would not grab a primer so if I did not notice that I would end up spilling powder all over the press.

So today I finally had some time for me. I took the press apart and measured everything and I ended up with a .0045 shim which according to a feeler gauge I am getting .002 clearance. Works nice and smooth. Once I got the clearance tightened up I noticed that the pawls needed adjustment. A half turn on the left pawl and I was timed perfectly. Ran a bunch of empty cases through the press. No more wobble. I also degreased everything and cleaned the press.

Then I set my sights on the priming system. I took a wet stone to the primer slide. I closely inspected the the hole for the primers. There were some burrs as seen under magnifier. I cleaned the burrs and gave it a very slight chamfer. I then saw I had the slide going a bit too far back so I adjust the rod for the travel. I used some Hornady dry lube on the slide. Then I ran it about 10 times without a case and I kept removing the primers. 10 times it picked up a primer. Now I was starting to smile. This never happened before. I had removed the priming stuff and was priming off press. Not ideal but was a work around. Then I ran 10 cases through the press. Picked up a primer each time. So far so good. But a few cases the primer did not seat all the way and the plate was sticking. I have had this problem too. I am pretty sure this is due to the primer pocket not being perfect. I have swaged all my primer pockets on a Dillon Super Swage 600. I noticed even on my RCBS bench primer that some pockets are still a bit tight. I even swaged them a second time on the Dillon. I had bought a Hornady primer pocket reamer a while ago. I chucked it in a drill and I reamed about 25 pieces of brass. I then ran these reamed pieces through the press. The primers went in with just a little effort and the are just below flush. All 25 primed without an issue.

I will try to load a few hundred rounds tomorrow. Today I just made sure I got the wobble corrected. I am real happy to get the priming system working too. I bought this press to save steps. Priming off press was not what I had in mind when I bought it.

I am thinking I will sell the Dillon Super Swage and just use a reamer on my brass. Seems to get a more uniform pocket.

Now that I have this thing dialed in I will spend the money for a case feeder. I was holding off because I was not happy with this press. Now I know it can work for me. Thanks to all who have posted their wisdom on this and other forums.

Forgot to add. I have all but one shim left in the pack. If someone wants the shims just pay for postage. There should be enough to shim another press.

Hold onto those shims. As you run the press things can wear or "break in" and you may eventually need a new shim combination

Man I hate to be the guy in the room who's probably doing it wrong, but I tried this and found no improvements of any kind.  I went through several sizes - which isn't easy by the way - be sure to have a piece of tape or something to help pull them out when trying different sizes.  By the way, did anyone else notice the torque they used on the screws holding the sub-plate to the shaft was insainly high?

After all the adjustments - I did find it messed up my prawl settings nicely, so had to play with those for a while.  And at times, you can't even get the subplate to rotate.  If you go too big, there's a bunch of drag.  After numerous attempts and much prawl play, I found in the end it's really no different, with primers setting no better or worse than before, and the ratchet action still being enough to jump a kernel or two of powder out of a charged case.

Obviously there's something different with my experience than with everyone else, but I sure don't know what!

When the shellplate is loose and has play from the factory the pawls stop short and the shellplate will snap into the detents, once you shim it
there should be slight drag on the shellplate and you may have to let the pawls out slightly to push the shellplate all the way to the detents

I think I said it near the start, not all presses will see an improvement. If the factory setup was close then the shimming will have little to no effect.

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

To the OP, you sir, are a genius!  For reference, my press is only 3 years old.  I had the tipping case issue going into position number one.  I also had the jerky shell plate movement causing powder to spill out of the smaller cases like 9mm, etc.  I bought the suggested shim kit.  The fix took a grand total of 20 minutes from start to finish.  I did not even measure my LNL but what I did was start with the .004" shim.  The .004" shim for my press got it close but it was still a little off.  I then tried the .007" shim and that seemed to completely fix all my issues.  I think I will leave it the way it is.  I loaded 50 rounds of 9mm without any issues.  I did not even have to adjust my pawls.  Thanks again!  

And by the way, my primers are also seating slightly deeper.  Before they were seating flush with the case.  Another huge plus in my book!!

Thanks to the OP for this thread.  I ordered a pack of shims.  I just got my LnL setup this past week and while I cannot tell how much the shims will help,  I do have ALOT of powder shake out of my 9mm cases and primer seating is a PIA, very very hard to seat small primers, more force required than I think should be, and I've dimpled the cast AL on my press from the force I'm using to seat them.  Many times I cannot feel well enough if they seated or not and the next stroke is a crapshoot on the shell plate dragging or not if the primer didn't seat fully.  At this point my Lee Loadmaster is priming WAY better than the LnL

Not hardly any kind of genius. I have tinkered with machines for over 40 years though,  and that experience has helped me to be able to diagnose and repair problems. To me the LNL AP is a well designed machine but like many mass produced machines the tolerance stacks sometimes end up in an undesirable place.

My next goal is to be able to adapt a Torrington bearing to the sub-plate so that the shell plate can be run in a near zero clearance condition. Obviously a modification that would require machining, but the result may be worth it.

Stay tuned.

I loaded my first 1k of 9mm over vacation and spent about a half hour trying to frig with the index pawls to prevent the shell plate jump.  Even at over a year old, I wanted to thank you very much for this post with great images and description.  I just ordered some of these and I look forward to the results.  Thanks again!

I am a new member but have gotten back into reloading after 20 years. I have always used a 1970's RCBS Rockchucker but bought the LNL AP 18 months ago. I have struggled with some issues but over time have managed to tune out some of the issues. This topic may finish off any issues. I always manage to collect a few powder sprinkles while running the press. Some may be coming from the Lock-out die but most from minor jerking of the shellplate when it rotates into its positions. I have order the shim pack and should have it in a few days. I have often wondered about the proper torque reading for torquing the shellplate. Seems like just another variable. I always tighten slightly past the shellplate breaking lose.

Welcome!  My Rockchucker is dated 1979, and was part of a kit my wife got me for my birthday in 1980.  It's still going strong.  My LnL AP has not "replaced" it at all, but it certainly has made it easier to produce more rounds in a shorter amount of time.  

I think that if you get your shellplate advancing smoothly, you'll wind up with far fewer powder flakes scattered around.  

I'm considering re-doing my shims because I have more drag than I really want.  Fortunately, after taking off the sub-plate once or twice, it's no longer a big deal.  Fishing out the shims, now that's another matter...it's not particularly simple with my big fingers.

Just grab the drive hub and pull it off of the drive shaft. It can only go back on one way.

P.S.
My Rockchucker is a 1974 model. Works like it did when it was new.

Ahh, you guys make me feel young.  Thanks!

I have not been able to find any torque limits on the shellplate. I would think that with the ball bearings, drive shaft, and gears that Hornady would have torque instructions. Most go by feel when the shellplate breaks lose after tightening. Has anyone looked into torque readings for the shellplate to determine just how tight is tight enough?

The Hornady manual tells you to tighten it "only enough to prevent it from coming loose."  Hornady doesn't seem to have published a torque specification.

You don't have to fish out the shims.  The hub the shim goes on just lifts out and you have access to the shim. When putting it back in just rotate it until it falls/realigns with the tab/bar on the shaft.

I had troubles with the shims changing between shell plates.  I used the 223 shell plate for the original adjustment and the shim measurement, but when I moved to 45 ACP it was too snug.  I ended up going down to the thinnest shim in the pack.

ETS:  Looks like TZ250 already mentioned lifting the hub out.

The reason that different shellplates have different shim needs is that the bottoms of the shellplates aren't flat. Hornady must heat treat after machining and the plates warp some. Also, if you have a whetstone it helps to dress the top of the subplate to ensure it is flat.

That is the basis of why I thought I had over tightened some of my shellplates. They some seem to have an ever so slight warp. (over-torqued).

I ended up taking my shim out.  It worked for the 9mm - but it bound up everything else. I don't recall which shim I used - but it was one of the thinnest ones.  I'll play more with setting the bearings in the shell plate when I get back to reloading.

I was wondering about flattening the shell plates.  It would seem that there is a small amount of variation there.

When I get a chance I'm going to try and lap a couple of my shellplates to see if I can get them flat. It will take moving the balls up enough so they aren't compromised and then setting them back.

You will know when it is too tight because the plate won't move!

I also have to change shims when changing shell plates... I just figured that the shell plates themselves had different tolerances on their thicknesses. I just found a middle ground one that made it tighter for all my shell plates but without binding.

I'm also now using one of these shims as described and I think it's helped me more with seating primers than smoothing the movement of the shell plate.  Here's what I experienced and a warning for those that might try this also.  

I was able to able to find a shim that really pulled the shell plate down snug to the press and did eliminate the jerky movements going from station to station.  However, what I found to my surprise (and I still don't understand how this could be) was that during half the rotation of the shell plate, it would really bind, then free up for the rest of the rotation.  I would expect it to be consistent.  Anyway I couldn't find a shim that really worked for one continuous trip around all the stations in the shell plate.  If I used a shim that didn't bind too much during one half of the rotation it was too loose on the other half and there was no benefit there.  If I really snugged it down with a thicker shim it was too tight to really move the shell plate and here's the warning.  What I DID accomplish while the shell plate was rubbing to much against the sub plate was apparently creating some sharp edges or burrs either on the bottom of my shell plate or the sub plate so that my retainer springs wouldn't last more than a minute or two of reloading.  I had never broken a spring before (I'm fairly new to reloading and this press) and all the sudden I broke 3 springs in about 5 minutes.  

I couldn't really see any damage but something was breaking the springs so what I did was take some really fine sand paper and dremel with polishing wheel and go over both the sub plate and bottom of the shell plate along the path where the spring touches each and it did fix my problem with breaking springs.

So, if you try this and you are getting a lot of binding...I would recommend you stop before you damage something like I did.

I'm now using a shim that really doesn't pull down the shell plate enough to smooth it out but does keep it lower to the sub plate some which I think helps seat primers a little deeper and so to me it's worth it for that.  

What you are experiencing is the same condition that my press exhibits. What we are dealing with here is a relationship of three different planes and one axis. The axis is the rotation of the drive hub. The three planes are the mounting surface of the drive hub, the top of the sub-plate, and the bottom of the shell plate. The two conditions that affect the planes the most are flatness and perpendicularity. If the perpendicularity of the drive hub and the sub-plate are both off by .001" over a 3" distance(an included angle of .038 degrees or a little more than 2 seconds of angle) then the plates will go from having a perfect fit to having .002" of interference in 180 deg. of rotation. Add in some flatness error in the shell plate and all of a sudden you have a press that won't index. This is why Hornady builds the press with so much clearance, so it will index under the worst conditions. Elimination of the flatness and perpendicularity errors involves highly precise machine work. A perfect setup would have precision roller bearings at the interfaces so that the clearances could be set to near zero and friction nearly eliminated. That might cause the press to have a $750 price tag and hurt sales significantly.

Thanks for the excellent explanation.

Another thing that I'm doing that I forgot to mention is that I have moved the ball bearings a little higher into the shell plate so that they have a little less force when they move into the subplate detents.  However, I think this does result in less accuracy when the shell plate stops as there's now a tiny bit of play because I guess the bearings aren't fully reaching the bottom of the detents.  And to combat that I tried to get my pawls adjusted exactly so they are really helping determine how far the plate rotates.  Sometimes it's not perfect but normally as the cases start to go into the dies if it's off a little bit everything gets aligned and rarely do I have a problem.  I do think this helps reduce spilled powder due to a more gentle movement into the detents.

Some people describe how they simply use their hand to brake the movement of the shell plate and I can see that this would work but I dont want to have to do that so what I've been thinking is about a way to create a brake device that would keep the shell plate from accelerating into the detents.  Just need something to rub against it in a non-harmful way that would keep it from speeding up and jerking as it moves into the detents.

I have yet to figure out how to control the orientation of the subplate to the drive hub axis.  I think my subplate is pretty close to truly flat, but I can't tell if it's really perpendicular to the hub's axis.  I do not trust that the subplate's mounting holes - and the ones in the press frame - are necessarily precise enough to guarantee a very close alignment of the plate to the hub's axis, but then I am not certain that the hub remains perfectly aligned in the press frame, either.  

The hub doesn't seem to have any sort of alignment support inside the frame.  Does the hub align on the subplate?  That would mean that the subplate would control the alignment of the two parts...  Or would there be a benefit to having a nylon bushing inside the press frame to keep the hub (and its shaft) aligned properly?

I started down the path of OP by installing shims.  I could get three of the five cases to not jump powder, but still had indexing issues on two of the stations.  I tinkered for several hours and returned one shell plate thinking it was warped.  It turns out that my drive hub from shoulder to top measures different and is not square, thus not allowing the drive hub, shell plate, and sub plate to be square.  It measures .947 on one side, and .942 on the other, so it is off as much as .005 of an inch.  So when I installed the .005 shim, I got it to index really well and not jump for three cases, but would jump and bounce powder on two.

I am really close to returning the whole thing and getting a Dillon.  It is frustrating that it has not worked correctly out of the box.  I am going to call Customer Service in the morning and see if they can help me out.  I just hate spending money on something that doesn't work properly and has issues.  I guess it is true, you get what you pay for.  There is a reason all the other progressives cost so much.  

Dillon's have issues too.

So I called Hornady today and spoke to Doug.  I described in detail the issue I was having of indexing and bouncing powder.  I was told that is normal for 9mm.  So I guess I am supposed to be satisfied with powder all over my bench.  I explained that I can get three spots to index perfect, but two still snap and rattle the cases.  I explained the findings with the drive hub and how it is off by .005".  I was told that he didn't think there was anything he could do for me.  Basically offered no help or assistance at all.  I pressed some more and he finally said he could send me a new drive hub, but didn't think that would fix my problem.  So, customer service is not a highlight for me at this point.  I am going to wait and see if the new hub measures similar to the old one and if it improves the press performance.  If not, I am taking the press back to Cabelas and either getting a Dillon, or just stick with my RCBS RockChucker.  It may be slow, but it is dependable.  I really hope the new hub works.  Fingers crossed.

Thanks for the information.  Please let us know what you find with the new hub.  If you see an improvement I will probably see about getting a new one too.  I think my press is same as yours as some spots are smoother than others, at least they are when I try to use the shims to snug the shell plate.  I don't really notice a difference without the shims.  If if fixes your problem or at least helps then I have hope it could help me too.  

I'm not sure I fully understand what is measuring 0.005" off, but is it something you can take to a machine shop and have them mill/lathe to your specs? I understand your frustration, but I also understand the cost/benefit analysis of trying to design a press that is accurate to the 0.0005" on every part. If the press works for 99.9% of its applications with a 0.005" difference, and the cost to fix that 0.005" difference would exceed the "retail" cost of competitors prices, I can see why a company would not worry about it.

I have loaded 380ACP on my press and haven't made any modifications. Sure you occasionally have some powder flick out if you go hotrod, but if I take my time I rarely see powder spill out that is larger than the accuracy of the powder dispenser and/or powder measure.

There are similar issues with Dillons, it's not uncommon at all if you hotrod it. There are even youtube videos on how to fix the dillon spillage issues.

I will say, I have reloaded on the Dillon XL650 and the Hornady AP and I would take the AP any day with the same setup (powder hopper). The priming system on the XL650 is so unreasonably stupid it's laughable. Your millage may vary, but if you're not happy with the AP, I doubt you will be happy with anything progressive.

I'm with you drfroglegs.  I get the tolerances versus cost of the press.  Believe me, I don't want to give up on this press.  I hope the new hub solves the issue.  If not, I may try to grind down the high spot on the hub I have to see if I can fix it.  My issue is not an occasional flick of powder.  It is in my mind excessive that every 2 to three full rotations I have to stop, clear the press, and clean the powder off the shell plate and bench.  Three of the slots index smooth as silk with barely any movement in the cases.  The other two index with more of a snap and shake powder all over.  This is the second shell plate I have tried, and it does it with my .45ACP and .44Mag shell plates too, so I am ruling out the shell plate being bad.