Dillon Dallying

Dilly Dally (THESAURUS.COM) - to waste time, especially by indecision; vacillate; trifle; loiter.

I have spent a lot of time (and money) trying to perfect my Dillon XL650. I bought a lot of after-market "upgrades", some seem to work well, many have proved to be a mistake.

1. Case Ejection. The short length of bent wire provided by Dillon for this purpose appears, initially, to be decidedly "Mickey Mouse". There are numerous 3D printer geeks on eBay, etc., offering brightly coloured plastic replacements that surely must be an improvement?

My experience, so far, is that they do not work well. But I see that they are now offering two versions, for use with / without a plate bearing:-

2. Plate bearing. Again, surely this must be a technical improvement.

But what I now discover is that the original Dillon wire spring ejector does not work correctly if you install this bearing. So one "improvement" causes a problem with another. Bought a new Dillon spring, removed the plate bearing and suddenly all of my shell ejection problems go away! Grrr...

3. Powder Measure Quick Disconnect.

These plastic ones go for about $15 each. I bought several, only to then suffer breakage of the casting on two of my Powder Measures, fortunately the broken casting is available from Dillon at reasonable cost. I have retired these plastic devices and use knurled head screws with the standard Dillon cast Aluminum retainer - good. I do also have one "Armanov" machined Aluminum version of the Quick Disconnect - it seems to work fine, but costs $35!

4. CNC Toolheads
I love these (From Jofer USA).


5. Index bearing cam block.
This seems to work well.


6. Photoescape Failsafe Bracket
Excellent.

And all of Alex's other parts (PMU's, etc.) are also excellent.

7. Case feeder adapter
This one from BigWestTrading works very well and that vendor is really helpful and fast - highly recommended.


8. UniqueTek Tool Head Kit
The engineer in me likes this - whether it actually improves accuracy is hard to say.


Just sharing all of this for the benefit of other Dillon users. Cheers!

Greetings,

An interesting read.

Makes me appreciate my Star loader even more.

Cheers,

Dave

And my (2) Hornady LNL AP presses, all I've added a strong mount and roller handle, aside from that its run like a champ. The more I read from you guys the less highly I regard Dillon's machines.

Don't know, my Dillon XL650 is bone stock and does nothing but work just fine for tens of thousands of 9mm, .38 Spec, and .45ACP.

I think that people get the notion that anything "aftermarket" must be an improvement.

DA/SA. 

With hindsight, yes I think that you are probably right about most "aftermarket" bits. I was attracted to many of those parts before discovering that my machine had a bad main platform from new. Once I identified that and got it replaced I then began to realise that many other small problems were not being helped by some of the aftermarket "improvements".

Live and learn!

Here's one for you - https://uniquetek.com/product/T1346-550 this is the spent primer chute. Works like a charm and I have less primers hitting the floor.

I agree with DA/SA.  My stock 650 works just fine.  I think some of the after market parts to smooth the function are really for the people who are loading rifle and have powder up to the top of the case and if the cases wiggle they loose powder.

For pistol i am not sure I would need much to "improve" it.  

One item i have been interested in is the mod to stop the primer feeder to not index.  I am glad that they took the priming system (even with the issues it has) from the 550 and put it in the 750.  I like the 550 priming system over the 650 but just have to keep it clean.

I love my 2 550's. When ever I have had any issues or questions, Dillon has been more than responsive.

Correction:

I did make some seating stems and powder funnels to suit what I was loading.

I also bought a couple of powder funnels from PhotoEscape that are quite functional.

the only problem I have had with my 650 is the case feeder motor died after many thousands of rounds.
John

The light that fits the center hole in the toolhead is the best aftermarket investment I've made. The missed live primer catcher upgrade works as advertised, too. The spent primer catcher has been less than perfect in operation. The hose gets kinked and the large pistol spent primers get stuck. They also got clogged up in the plastic housing and the unit had to be disassembled with spent primers going all over the floor. The best thing I've done, on the advice from Dillon, is to lube the center pin that hold the shellplate in place.

Since my name was mentioned in this tread few times, I want to chime in with couple of my own thoughts.

Firstly, I appreciate high marks given to my parts by Roy and others.  However I appreciate even more the change in the NRA Classification under Roy Dean's name!  Congratulations, Roy!

Secondly, at this point I own five Dillon's presses, - 2xXL650, XL750, RL1050 and Super 1050, two Star presses Mr. Wilson mentioned, and three Lee Single stage and Turret.

I discarded idea of trying LNL presses after research and in person experience with presses owned by others.  It is press, IMHO for younger folks like Zane, who have more time left than I do, and can spend it changing one die at the time, when caliber needs to be changed.  And there several other issue with this platform, but it is more or less functional.  Even thou Hornady has quick change gizmo pre-set for each die, I prefer to plop complete tool head and start loading, - time is the most valuable commodity for me.  Because of that I have 4 (four!) different XL650/750 tool heads for loading 45 ACP alone, and about two dozen of others for everything I load.

From engineering stand point, and once again this is purely my opinion, - I don't insist on anyone subscribing to it, agreeing with me or arguing otherwise, Star Reloader had best design, and, most importantly, - execution.  Pretty much all parts are machined and machined to quite high tolerances.  There are couple of cast parts, that are secondary processed to great degree of accuracy as well.  The problem with Star is rather one of the human that uses it, - reloader must be anal in paying attention to detail and ones own actions.  Otherwise with manual indexing it is very easy to arrive to the results highlighted in this recent post -

AND YOU THOUGHT YOU HAD A BAD DAY. BOOM 

Presses like Star, Dillon 550 and even manually indexed turret presses are for experienced reloaders, that have enough experience and developed sense to potential problem, in particular - double charge, and can re-trace steps backwards or simply discard/re-process problematic rounds.

So, IMHO, auto-indexing is a must feature of the press.  AFAIK, Zane has Dillon's SDB press, - this is a good starting unit for someone loading limited number of calibers.

Thirdly, - after market parts.  There are several categories of such parts.  Parts that add functionality, like lights mentioned by BE Mike or UniqueTek's tool head locking kit, parts that address deficiencies of OEM designs, like my replacement FSB, and parts that enhance functionality of existing parts, like my PTUs, Jofer or Whidden tool heads.  And then there are aftermarket parts that I scrutinize with paper and pencil or by trying.  I did try for one reloading session needle bearing kit that Roy mentioned in his post, and immediately took it off as useless from stand point of achieving stated goal.  I understand that it is difficult to evaluate aftermarket parts, and that is why sharing experience like in this tread is very important.  I have no hesitation to admit that on many occasions I contacted Dave Willson (and several others) asking for advice, and I also can recall couple occasions when he contacted me with questions.  With that said, - I'll be happy to answer your questions and share my thoughts.  My suggestion on the after market parts - try starting from asking yourself: "do I really have problem that this part is addressing", and then " OEM part works but I really would like to do this........  Is there a solution?"

Just mine 2 cents.

AP

The light in the center hole I found to be useless, was not very bright. I actually tried 3 different ones.

The press light that I love is the KMS UFO. It is like the sun is beaming into the press, I found it to be awesome and have one on both of my XL650's. http://www.kmssquared.com/ufo_h.html

I also found the failsafe bracket kit from UniqueTek to be an excellent upgrade. Much more reliable than the stock bracket that bends easily with use. https://www.uniquetek.com/product/T1677