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I have been spending the odd few minutes on my Dillon RL1000 conversion to .303 and I have to say it seems to work well now other than the case feeder which has two issues. Some brass has a slightly bigger rim diameter and stick in the feed tube so I can either cull the brass that fails or look at a slightly larger feed tube. I probably have some suitable aluminium tube which would look good. The other issue is I cannot find any settings for the case feeder itself, with lots of brass in the feeder the brass is orientated correctly and falls down the tube. When the number of cases in the feeder drops the cases fail to orientate.

So has anyone loaded for .303 with a case feeder on any press and if so how did it go?

Ovenpaa wrote:with lots of brass in the feeder the brass is orientated correctly and falls down the tube. When the number of cases in the feeder drops the cases fail to orientate.

I haven't seen the collator plate for a RL1000 feeder, but how are they not orienting correctly? Are cases not dropping into the slots in the collator plate at all (when not full)? It shouldn't matter which way round they are as long as they are in the slots. I'd expect the function to be the same as with other rifle cases; if the head passes over the drop hole first then it drops. If the mouth passes first the weight of the head keeps it horizontal until the head arrives at the hole, so it drops head first either way.

Right now I am running the feeder with 4 spaces between pins and this seems to work quite well. Oddly the majority of cases fall through the gate correctly regardless of orientation in the slot which could be down to the weight of the rim moving the centre of balance down, that or the gate is incorrectly set.

Ovenpaa wrote:Right now I am running the feeder with 4 spaces between pins and this seems to work quite well. Oddly the majority of cases fall through the gate correctly regardless of orientation in the slot which could be down to the weight of the rim moving the centre of balance down, that or the gate is incorrectly set.

The pins look too close together for a case to sit flat in the gap between the pins.

They were! That was the wrong image. They feed OK now and the machine is producing acceptable ammunition. I am impressed with the powder throwing, I need 40.4 grains of Varget and it will throw the exact measure time on time with only an occasional 0.1 low reading at maybe 1 in 10 or 15, in fact I gave up checking in the end.