Turn Your FX-120i into a Prometheus

[BoydAllen]

I get the bit about the cross increasing the wrap on the smaller pulley, but you could retain that and remove the contact at the belt crossing point by rotating the trickler a little so tha the shafts were no longer parallel. If more tension was needed a small spacer could be placed between the top of the motor and the bottom of the trickler. Trickler leveling could be cheated so that the tube ran more uphill or down hill to slow or speed the rate.

 

[jlow]

I get the bit about the cross increasing the wrap on the smaller pulley, but you could retain that and remove the contact at the belt crossing point by rotating the trickler a little so tha the shafts were no longer parallel. If more tension was needed a small spacer could be placed between the top of the motor and the bottom of the trickler. Trickler leveling could be cheated so that the tube ran more uphill or down hill to slow or speed the rate.

I am pretty sure your idea of rotating the trickler will do the trick of preventing the rubbing but yet keeping the same pressure. Would be interested to hear what Adam has to say about this relative to how the thing is put together, specifically how the trickler is attached to the 3-D printed box that the stepper motor is sitting in.

 

[Cujo]

The trickler is attached to the stand with the two screws at the bottom of the trickler. There is a raised circle that's part of the stand that the bottom of the trickler fits around. It looks like you can rotate the trickler. You'd just have to drill and tap new holes into the stand.

I know where you guys are coming from IRT the belt rubbing but it works just fine for me as is. I'm sure there will be little improvements down the road. Adam's auto trickler has become my favorite tool on the reloading bench.

 

[ericbc7]

Thanks Cujo, exactly the info I was hoping for (I'm expecting mine in a few weeks- no pressure Adam lol).

 

[Cujo]

You'll really like it.

My bench top is really smooth so when the trickler slows down, it tends to slide a bit. I just get masking tape and tape the stand down and remove it when I'm done.

 

[Dakota_Mike]

One thing I have done to mine is add a straw similar to the chargemaster. It reduces the diameter of the shaft and helps spread the kernels out a little reducing clumps. It also extends to the middle of the scale a little better where the scale should be more accurate. Since the tube is smaller than a chargemaster you have to slit the length of the straw and roll it a little to make it fit.

One thing I have noticed is that the only speed that works for me is the slowest one on the slider. Anything else wants to throw way over the desired charge weights. On future releases you may want to slow it down a little more and extend the motor step that is about .2-.3 grains under the charge weight. If I start .4 under the desired weight it wants to go over but if I drop .2 under to start it works great. This is mostly varget and 4350 throwing 600-800 charges and works great just wish it had a little more range on the slow end of the slider.

 

[ericbc7]

I would think that the slider could be re-calibrated with a programming code change to accommodate your particular needs. How that is done is beyond me unfortunately.

 

[adamjmac]

The trickler is attached to the stand with the two screws at the bottom of the trickler. There is a raised circle that's part of the stand that the bottom of the trickler fits around. It looks like you can rotate the trickler. You'd just have to drill and tap new holes into the stand.

I know where you guys are coming from IRT the belt rubbing but it works just fine for me as is. I'm sure there will be little improvements down the road. Adam's auto trickler has become my favorite tool on the reloading bench.

You don't need to drill new holes, just screw right into a bare part of the plastic. It is soft enough and will make a tighter fit. The trickler itself is tapped which is what holds the screw.

 

[adamjmac]

One thing I have done to mine is add a straw similar to the chargemaster. It reduces the diameter of the shaft and helps spread the kernels out a little reducing clumps. It also extends to the middle of the scale a little better where the scale should be more accurate. Since the tube is smaller than a chargemaster you have to slit the length of the straw and roll it a little to make it fit.

One thing I have noticed is that the only speed that works for me is the slowest one on the slider. Anything else wants to throw way over the desired charge weights. On future releases you may want to slow it down a little more and extend the motor step that is about .2-.3 grains under the charge weight. If I start .4 under the desired weight it wants to go over but if I drop .2 under to start it works great. This is mostly varget and 4350 throwing 600-800 charges and works great just wish it had a little more range on the slow end of the slider.

Tilt the assembly forward a little. Makes a huge difference. Space it with some stickers underneath.

 

[Dakota_Mike]

I have tried multiple different spacers and angles. It definitely needs a little downward angle as flat can be really slow. I'll play with the tilt a little more.

 

[IPSCNUT]

Gracious, did you folks buy this device to load with or to tinker with? Give Adam a break I'm still waiting on mine to be delivered!!!!!!!!

 

[jlow]

It’s not criticism but constructive feedback.

Adam has done an incredible job coming up with this idea and putting it together and making it work as well as it does. However, in the end, despite a lot of testing by him up front, he is really only one guy and of course he is pretty busy putting products together right now. The guys who buy the first one are really testers and testers should always give constructive feedback to the builders. Right now the thing works very well but that does not mean it could not improve for later adopters. In the end, a better product is good for everyone.

 

[tonyb]

tag

 

[jkl]

Dropping powder is way more fun!

 

[Elwood]

I received mine a few days ago and have spent the last couple days getting used to it, before evaluating it. Firstly I would like to say Adam is a stand up guy. My unit was missing the dowels but I managed to improvise with a decapping pin. I emailed Adam to tell him about the missing dowels, he replied within four hours and has posted me four dowels.

My system for a while now has been to throw a light charge on a RCBS Chargemaster and then decant into a pan on the A&D FX120i and trickle up to weight using a Dandy trickler. While I'm trickling the next charge is being dispensed on the Chargemaster. Not exactly ground breaking as I know a lot of people use this system, but it's very accurate and quite quick.

After I got used to Adam's new unit I thought it was time to test it. I did two tests loading 50 .308 cases. The first 50 I did in 21 minutes 30 secs, the second 50 in 18 minutes and 28 seconds. I took 10 cases from the first 50 and weighed them again, all ten were within a kernal of powder. That's pretty quick and I doubt I could speed it up anymore.

I have since timed my Chargemaster doing 50 .308 cases and trickling up, obviously using the same powder. I have to say I was quite surprised at how quick it was, with 26 minutes and 10 secs on the clock. My other observation was no powder spillage, unlike the automated trickler. I did notice the odd kernal of powder bouncing out of the pan when using the Lee scoops.

I will be interested to see how much quicker Adam's automated trickler is when using bigger loads, I know my Charge master takes roughly between 15-22 seconds to throw a 66 grain charge of N165. Unfortunately the Lee scoops aren't big enough to get me near the 66 gr, but I'm sure I will something suitable.

All in all, I like it.

 

[jlow]

Elwood – one way to speed things up for a bigger charge if you don’t have a large enough Lee scoops (have you brought the complete set yet?) is to actually buy two of those RCBS weighing pans and “adjust” them so that they are exactly the same weight. I did this by first snipping the handle down first to get close, and then polishing it with a grinding bit with a Dremel. If you are careful, you can get them exactly the same. With that, you can be loading up the pans while the other one is trickling.

I have timed mine and it is about the same speed as yours. What I find is the autotrickler is very fast but I am not so fast… Basically, it takes me time to take the weighting pan out of the balance, empty it into a case or a test tube, return the pan to the balance and then add a large scoop of powder to the pan. So there is a lot of non-trickler, operator time burning involved.

My guess is if you have two people running it, it will go the fastest speed especially if you can consistently throw in a very close weight of powder first and using two pans. However, that does not bother me as raw speed is not a factor since I normally don’t have to load up a huge number of rounds and what I like about the autotrickler is it takes the tedium of fine weighting out of the equation.

 

[Sheldon N]

Elwood – one way to speed things up for a bigger charge if you don’t have a large enough Lee scoops (have you brought the complete set yet?) is to actually buy two of those RCBS weighing pans and “adjust” them so that they are exactly the same weight. I did this by first snipping the handle down first to get close, and then polishing it with a grinding bit with a Dremel. If you are careful, you can get them exactly the same. With that, you can be loading up the pans while the other one is trickling.

Yes, I think the "two pan rotation" is likely to be your fastest workflow. You could also work a powder thrower into the mix instead of scooping. Throw a charge about 1 grain low and let the trickler finish it off. Swap pans, dump finished charge in case (move a funnel along a loaded case block), throw powder in pan, swap pans on scale, repeat. Watching the videos of the trickler it looks like it could go as fast as you could dump powder and swap pans.

 

[avidflyer]

Just found this. Interesting.

http://www.scout.com/military/snipe...atic-powder-trickler-with-sartorius-entris-64

youve posted this twice....and in someone elses thread....nice...

 

[adamjmac]

I appreciate all the feedback and I am doing my best to incorporate the good ideas into the new assemblies and update the instructions as I go. Thanks everyone.

 

[TZaun]

Adam, how can you re-zero your pan without having to re-set your charge weight? Every different combo I've tried I always end up re-setting my charge weight. The problem I have is not with your product, rather my scale. For some reason my scale needs the empty pan to go back on and see a "0" before the next charge can go on. As long as I do that, it will hold a zero all day long as long as the temp in my reloading room doesn't change. With your auto trickler, that can't be done obviously, unless you want to trickle the whole charge. Right now I am using my Lyman to throw a charge 1.5 grains light and let your machine do the rest. My scale will drift .02 grains every 10-15 rounds and it doesn't just stop there. It will continually drift light. I will have to contact A&D eventually and find out what to do there.