550b Powder Tuning

View · by **MarkL** on Mon Mar 17, 2014 4:17 pm

Got tired of fighting a small variance in the powder drops, though small, the frustration was large as to why couldn't I get consistent drops.
So this weekend I tore apart both powder measures ( 1 for my 9mm die set and 1 for .45). Those plastic tubes are really stuck good in the powder funnel!
The insides of the funnels were quite rough and there was some slight small flashing at the bottom of the funnel where it drops into the powder bar. Grabbed some 400 sandpaper and cleaned everything up and then the dremel with some polishing compound until I got it like a mirror on both.

Reassembled, tweaked some linkages and ran some test drops (about 400 of Bullseye). I got 4.85 gr per drop consistently and randomly did 4 - 10 drop measures and got 48.5 gr (beam scale used). Prior to the tuneup, it was set for 4.8 and would vary +- .2. While not a huge variance, the occurance was frequent. I felt I could get this to do better and looks like I have. I'm thinking the little lip or flashing at the bottom of the funnel was probably the biggest culprit.

Looks like I fixed it up just in time too, ordered 4k 9mm 115gr FMJ from PD yesterday and got the ship notice today! Looks like I better get some brass tumbled.

Mark

View · by **Synergy** on Mon Mar 17, 2014 6:50 pm

What plastic tube in the powder funnel are you referring to?

View · by **Makarov** on Mon Mar 17, 2014 7:10 pm

Plastic hopper that holds the powder.

http://forums.1911forum.com/showthread.php?t=154783

View · by **loose** on Tue Mar 18, 2014 6:53 am

Im gonna have to do this!

View · by **Synergy** on Tue Mar 18, 2014 6:40 pm

Duh, on the plastic, I thought he meant inside the powder funnel/expander.

I did polish one of mine up, still need to try out the ground wire as everything else I've tried to eliminate static has failed. The one thing I don't get is why Dillon made the inside of the funnel/expander and the metal tube above it so dam rough on the inside. I need a way to smooth this out, so far I've tried a dremmel and I also tried some sandpaper wrapped around a drill bit spinning it but the metal is just too dam tough.

View · by **mzdadoc** on Tue Mar 18, 2014 6:54 pm

Thanks for my new Saturday project!!! Great job!!!!