Dillion 550...

[Sharkbite]

I finally broke down and ordered one.

Been running a single stage for all my rifle 223, 300blk and 308. I'll prob still use the single stage to resize rifle cause i like to clean the lube off before loading primers and powder.

I got the 9mm caliber conversion so i can start loading pistol in large amounts.

[hodaka]

Yes and cleaning the primer pockets but the Dillon is the bee's knees for pistols. I just loaded 300 9mm's while watching an old Chuck Norris movie.

[chiefr]

I rag the lube off after I load up a batch when using a progressive.
Not much of a problem with pistol brass as I use carbide dies. I never clean primer pockets as I consider it a waste of time.

Congrats on your purchase, once you get your dies set, you can really crank out some ammo with your Dillon.

[kilimanjaro]

You'll like it for the rifle shells, too. 300 rounds an hour just taking your time about it.

[idriller]

I just got mine set up last month. I now wonder how I lived with out it.

[KEYBEAR]

No doubt Dillion makes good stuff . Two years ago I sold my XL-650 and 550-B I retired and have too much time a single stage works for me . I load on my old Rock Chucker 100 or so is all I need to do in one day .

You will like the Dillion a lot

[wogpotter]

I use a universal depriming die, on my old single stage, then clean primer pockets & do other case prep before going to my 550 for the actual reloading cycle.
A tip for a new progressive loader BTW, regarding case trimming.
Measure 5 cases for OAL. Resize them & measure again. Calculate the average stretch. Deduct that from the max case OAL & use that as your new trim-to measurement.

[Catfish]

You will love it. I`ve been loading on one since the late 70`s or early 80`s. Some advice, stick to ball powders, they measure much better. You can save money buy using 1 powder funnel for rounds of the same cal. and use shell plates for different cases also. With a cartridge conversion kit for 30-06 you can load an round with a .473 case head buy simply buying a different powder funnel, and I use 1 powder funnel for 22 Hornet, 222, 223, 222 mag, 22-250 and 224 TTH. The first year I had mine I loaded over 12,000 round of handgun ammo and over 1,200 rounds of rifle ammo. I have a few rifles that will hold 1/2 in plus or minus a little with loads from the Dillon.

[TXGunNut]

Good choice. I stepped up and bought one of the very first 550's and it served me well for my comp shooting career. It even came out of retirement a few years ago when I decided $50 was too much to pay for 100 rds of 45acp. I cast and loaded 2K rounds for about the cost of a few hundred rounds of today's ammo.
Nowadays I seldom load more than 40 rifle rounds at a time so the 550 is again retired but ready under that big blue cover.

[Mike1]

Hope you ordered extra tool heads. You'll need them for quicker change overs.

I clean off the lube after I've finished loading. Never had a problem with primer or powder contamination.

You'll notice that changing primer sizes is time consuming. I try to get all my loading done with calibers using the same primer size before switching.

Couple of things to consider getting for your press. The press-on plastic knobs to put on your powder measure, and an LED light from inlinefabrication.

Mike

[UncleAlbert]

I think you are going to like your new Dillon...I've had mine since the 1980's and in that time I broke one de-capping pin. Have never replaced any other parts.

[Jeff92]

never used a 550 but I've used a hornady LnL progressive and my buddy sets his 650 up the same way to process brass prior to loading by running it through the press with the sizer die in stage one then through a Dillon rapid trim in stage two ( buy one it's worth it if you load more than a couple thousand rounds a year ) then though a die with the same size decaping pin ( I use a 22-250 for 223 and my 30-06 for the 308 ) set so the bell goes through the case mouth to knock off any burr but the die doesn't contact the case. I can prep 600+ cases an hour sized and trimmed to length ready to go into the tumbler for lube removal/ final polish.

[wogpotter]

I used a Dillon RL450b for a few decades then upgraded to an RL550b when a deal presented itself.

I don't know what better endorsement I can give.

[Unclenick]

Sharkbite,

You'll like it.

Since the press is progressive, take Wogpotter's first post seriously. He didn't spell it out, but neck growth occurs during resizing (see my exaggerated illustration below). If you want to trim before resizing so as not to interrupt the progressive flow-through, you need to allow for that growth, which is what he described a method for.

As a sometimes-OCW person who has just enough understanding of statistics to be dangerous, the only change to Wogpotter's description I would make is to measure 15 rather than 5, and pull them as randomly as possible from the pile. The actual number you need to measure could be just 5 or it could be more, depending how consistently your brass grows in resizing. I've seen variations in .308 that meant I needed a minimum sample size of between 7 and 8 just to have 99.9% confidence (no more rejects than 1 out of a 1000) that none of the cases I trimmed would go out of spec during sizing, and that was assuming no measuring or trimming error. In reality there is trimming and measuring error. When I went to the Giraud trimmer, variance in case base to headspace datum length was added to that. Plus, I didn't know if the worst case I'd seen was actually the worst of the worst. So I found I had to allow about half the remaining tolerance to be gobbled up by those factors, and doubled the sample size of 7.5 to cover the difference.



A couple of other things to monitor. Watch how deeply your primers seat. They should be 0.002" to 0.006" below flush with your case heads. Some primers and some brass need a harder shove of the handle to seat properly. I found I get better consistency from the Dillon priming mechanism if I run all cases, including uncrimped commercial cases, through the Dillon swaging tool or used a primer pocket profile reamer first. Note that the swaging method can bend flash hole burrs over the flash hole, so you will need to deburr if you do that. Before or after doesn't matter. Both operations need only be done once in the life of a case.

If you have any issues with cartridge eccentricity, I found using the Redding Competition Seater Die helped correct that. YMMV. There are other approaches to handling that problem. Using a Lyman M die on the case mouths as an additional step, then setting the bullets at the last station can do it, but, for rifle, then you are giving up a place to put a powder check die. Your option there.

A lot of folks have taken to adapting white LED's to the Dillons and other progressive presses to shine down into the cases to get a better view of powder level.