Best Auto primer loader

Looking for one of the machines that automatically loads primers into the Dillon primer tubes and wondering which one does the best job, or if there any to avoid. 

Thanks,
-Trevor

hengehold wrote:Looking for one of the machines that automatically loads primers into the Dillon primer tubes and wondering which one does the best job, or if there any to avoid. 

Thanks,
-Trevor

I have the Double Alpha Primafill, and I’ve been unsatisfied with it. I’ve had too many flipped primers with small pistol, and while I get fewer flipped on the large pistol side, I don’t think it actually saves any time. 

Don

Thanks for the reply.
I also borrowed a friend’s Dillon brand machine and it would consistently get clogged up and not fill the tubes. When it worked it definitely saved time. When it didn’t work it would have been faster to fill the tubes by hand.

I have the Frankford Arsenal Vibraprime. It's cheap plastic and I think it's a luck of the draw whether a particular casting works out. The first I had to return, the second I use for small pistol and it works great but jams so often with large pistol I don't bother with it for those.

I have two Dillon's Primer fillers, separately for small and large primers.  I learned the shortcomings of these machines, replaced plastic inserts with brass, and recently had one rebuilt at Dillon.  Another one was rebuilt several years ago.  I can't say I am 100% satisfied, but it is well above 90% now.  I see definite dependency on brand name of primers with CCI being worth.  I have not tried anything else.

AP

I've had the Frankford Arsenal Vibraprime for many, many years. There is a learning curve on how to hold it to get it to feed optimally, but it isn't overwhelming. I even load directly into Dillon primer feeder tubes, as well as, the ones that come with the Vibraprime. You do have to figure out how to hold the Dillon tubes to get it to work with them. I'm pretty patient about such things.

I’ have the alpha. There is a learning curve and you do get flips. Faster is you don’t have issues with throwing out bad primer loads

So far doesn’t sound like there is a clear consensus on a reliable option.

The best ones are the vibratory ones that feed Camdex and Ammoload machines, but they ain’t cheap.  The Dillon RF100 is close, but I’ve had issues with upside down primers in mine.  Maybe I don’t hold my mouth in the right way, dunno.  The others can be made work, I guess, but as alluded there are ways that they screw up too.

For the Dillon machines I have found it is best to buy extra primer fill tubes and keep them full by filling them when I watch tv or have some spare time with nothing special to do. Anything mechanical will break or mess up sooner or later so I avoid the auto primer feed fillers, they can cause an explosion that I don't need to happen.

I've been reloading since around 1971. In my experience primers are not that easy to set off unless one is individually contained (as in a primer pocket) and struck by a firing pin or heated to the extreme. Here is an interesting video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es1YgL3izWY

BE Mike wrote:I've been reloading since around 1971. In my experience primers are not that easy to set off unless one is individually contained (as in a primer pocket) and struck by a firing pin or heated to the extreme. Here is an interesting video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es1YgL3izWY

Been loading since back in the 1960's, yeah, I'm that old and have not had a primer go off while reloading ammo. God only knows how many Shells I have reloaded over the years, lots of things have to go wrong to set one off but can if you are not careful and don't keep your equipment clean.
I have seen dents in primers from a speck or grain of powder being in the seating cup on top of the pin.  I was having problems with my primer feeder with Winchester primers which seem to have a longer cup and are a tad bigger in diameter then Federal and the feeder would skip picking up a primer which caused powder to drop out of the primer flash hole, fixed the rod linkage and solved the problem on my old Dillon 450 which I had converted to a 550 by adding a primer feeder.
Dillon recommends certain brands of primers due to having had someone blow up the primer feeders on one of their machines.
I'm never in a hurry when I reload and find it a relaxing hobby and have no need to rush and load all the ammo I plan to shoot for a month or a year. If I had to do that, I would just buy Factory ammo and forget about reloading and casting my own bullets.

Rodger Barthlow wrote:

BE Mike wrote:I've been reloading since around 1971. In my experience primers are not that easy to set off unless one is individually contained (as in a primer pocket) and struck by a firing pin or heated to the extreme. Here is an interesting video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es1YgL3izWY

Been loading since back in the 1960's, yeah, I'm that old and have not had a primer go off while reloading ammo. God only knows how many Shells I have reloaded over the years, lots of things have to go wrong to set one off but can if you are not careful and don't keep your equipment clean.
I have seen dents in primers from a speck or grain of powder being in the seating cup on top of the pin.  I was having problems with my primer feeder with Winchester primers which seem to have a longer cup and are a tad bigger in diameter then Federal and the feeder would skip picking up a primer which caused powder to drop out of the primer flash hole, fixed the rod linkage and solved the problem on my old Dillon 450 which I had converted to a 550 by adding a primer feeder.
Dillon recommends certain brands of primers due to having had someone blow up the primer feeders on one of their machines.
I'm never in a hurry when I reload and find it a relaxing hobby and have no need to rush and load all the ammo I plan to shoot for a month or a year. If I had to do that, I would just buy Factory ammo and forget about reloading and casting my own bullets.

I thought, way back when, Dillon suggested Winchester primers because they fed better in their machines. I stepped to a Lyman Spartan press, from a Lee Loader; then to a Dillon RL 450. Years later, my wife, for Christmas, got me the Dillon conversion to the 550! It was rebuilt by Dillon a couple of years ago. I also acquired a used Dillon 650. Both are still going strong.

Dillon had problems with CCI in the early primer feeders and recommended both WW and Fed. Maybe because they are made from harder metal, and they took more force to set them.
My 450/550 conversion hasn't needed to be rebuilt yet but could use a little TLC maybe. I strip and clean it on a yearly basis in the winter. I also probably have adjusted the shell plate a little too snug which causes the WW primers to hang if you back stroke the plate and will turn them on their side or flip them over. Not a problem with the 550B so maybe I have some ware in the ram.

BE Mike wrote:I've been reloading since around 1971. In my experience primers are not that easy to set off unless one is individually contained (as in a primer pocket) and struck by a firing pin or heated to the extreme. Here is an interesting video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es1YgL3izWY

I have a Vibraprime, it works ok after some experimenting.

I need to try it with the GENEX spp's. Just changed over my 1050 to small primer setup. 

I've set off one LPP in a D1050. The LPP will complain about being stuffed into a small primer pocket case. Got my attention for sure. After that episode I'm a lot better about cleaning the slide every few hundred cycles. I understand that funky looking dust that builds up can lead to a chain fire situation.

I just prime by hand. The APS system was handy, but I went back to the tray fed hand tool. Seems the notches on the strip get buggered up a bit and don't index reliably after awhile.

But I'm sure I'm not loading anywhere near the qty some of you are. Or at least not in any rush.. Decap, tumble, and prime at my leisure. Sometimes in front of the TV while watching one of the kids, with Disney stuff on ... with air conditioning ...

Warning ... rambling ...

Old Disney, hand drawn and painted transparencies, solid images vs the semi transparent CGI garbage they do today. The animation itself, Mowgli walking along lonely and depressed, kicking at stones... the body language is just perfect.

WesG wrote:I just prime by hand. The APS system was handy, but I went back to the tray fed hand tool. Seems the notches on the strip get buggered up a bit and don't index reliably after awhile.

But I'm sure I'm not loading anywhere near the qty some of you are. Or at least not in any rush.. Decap, tumble, and prime at my leisure. Sometimes in front of the TV while watching one of the kids, with Disney stuff on ... with air conditioning ...

Warning ... rambling ...

Old Disney, hand drawn and painted transparencies, solid images vs the semi transparent CGI garbage they do today. The animation itself, Mowgli walking along lonely and depressed, kicking at stones... the body language is just perfect.

I have found priming by hand is the most reliable method to not have any upside down primers, also helps identify defective brass. Speed wise, I think it is close enough to manually filling primer tubes. The loading process with off press primed brass seems to be smoother to me too. 

+1 to the old Disney animation. I would love to have some of the old cel art.

chiz1180 wrote:. Speed wise, I think it is close enough to manually filling primer tubes. The loading process with off press primed brass seems to be smoother to me too. 

Don't forget the time spent de-capping, and also the time spent in general handling the brass numerous times.

DA/SA wrote:

chiz1180 wrote:. Speed wise, I think it is close enough to manually filling primer tubes. The loading process with off press primed brass seems to be smoother to me too. 

Don't forget the time spent de-capping, and also the time spent in general handling the brass numerous times.

I have a semi-dedicated press for de-capping/sizing before wet cleaning. I preferred this method even when I was priming on the press as it kept the press cleaner when loading. I recently added a  case feeder, de-capping/ sizing is now as fast as I can pull the handle.

+1 to the old Disney animation. I would love to have some of the old cel art.

 Friend of a friend had a few he'd bought at auction. Absolutely beautiful. And mind boggling to think of how many thousands they had to produce. Rooms full of artists painting them.

BOT ... for now ...

Yeah, not much extra time and somewhat cleaner at the press. And being one of those 'rifle guys',  there's the obsession with cleaning primer pockets... the pins in the tumbler being far less work than twisting a tool one by one. 80 rds from a HP match, vs ....

BE Mike wrote:I've had the Frankford Arsenal Vibraprime for many, many years. There is a learning curve on how to hold it to get it to feed optimally, but it isn't overwhelming. I even load directly into Dillon primer feeder tubes, as well as, the ones that come with the Vibraprime. You do have to figure out how to hold the Dillon tubes to get it to work with them. I'm pretty patient about such things.

Mike~

I have the Vibraprime and it's very frustrating - I have tried to angle it a few different ways and still get jams.... What's your secret?

Val

valbern67 wrote:

BE Mike wrote:I've had the Frankford Arsenal Vibraprime for many, many years. There is a learning curve on how to hold it to get it to feed optimally, but it isn't overwhelming. I even load directly into Dillon primer feeder tubes, as well as, the ones that come with the Vibraprime. You do have to figure out how to hold the Dillon tubes to get it to work with them. I'm pretty patient about such things.

Mike~

I have the Vibraprime and it's very frustrating - I have tried to angle it a few different ways and still get jams.... What's your secret?

Val

What kind of "jams"? Are you using Vibraprime fill tubes or other, like Dillon? You only need a very slight tilt towards where the primers "march" in. Good batteries keep it working at optimum efficiency. Like I said, "I'm patient". Oh yeah, if you try to feed small pistol primers using the large pistol primer hole, that would be a problem. I'm sure that you aren't doing that.

A few years ago I bought the Hornady vibrating primer filler from Brownells. It was a pain in the butt. For the life of me, I couldn't get it to work. It was faster to fill the tubes manually.

BE Mike wrote:

valbern67 wrote:

BE Mike wrote:I've had the Frankford Arsenal Vibraprime for many, many years. There is a learning curve on how to hold it to get it to feed optimally, but it isn't overwhelming. I even load directly into Dillon primer feeder tubes, as well as, the ones that come with the Vibraprime. You do have to figure out how to hold the Dillon tubes to get it to work with them. I'm pretty patient about such things.

Mike~

I have the Vibraprime and it's very frustrating - I have tried to angle it a few different ways and still get jams.... What's your secret?

Val

What kind of "jams"? Are you using Vibraprime fill tubes or other, like Dillon? You only need a very slight tilt towards where the primers "march" in. Good batteries keep it working at optimum efficiency. Like I said, "I'm patient". Oh yeah, if you try to feed small pistol primers using the large pistol primer hole, that would be a problem. I'm sure that you aren't doing that.

The jams I get (with large (Win & CCI) primers) is the primer 1/20 times or so flips sideways instead of falling in the hole and gets wedged in there. This happens still while only while letting one in the little channel at a time (or several, happens more with several in the channel/chute). Then I have to remove the tray from the unit and pop the primer out of the hole it's stuck sideways in. Sometimes I can whack the side and get the primer to move while still assembled, but it usually then flips upside down before dropping in the hole. Other times it's wedged in there and no whacking affects it. 

It works fine on the SPP side. The quality of the plastic castings seem poor and I'm guessing it's a luck of the draw, but if there's a way I could use the LPP side reliably I'd be overjoyed