ericthered
UZI Talk Supporter
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2020
- Messages
- 311
I have always used a Hornady balance beam scale, powder trickler and 1/8 teaspoon measure for working up a load. It is a long, tedious, and generally unpleasant experience. Tedious tasks are not my favorite, so I kept my load building to a minimum... yes, thats a bad idea. I have read varying reviews about various automatic tricklers, some good, some bad. So I ended up deciding to throw a little money at improving my pathetic reloading setup (I bought a Hornady progressive at the same time as this). Reviews for the Frankford seemed about as good as any other brand (which are all more expensive).
So, stories aside:
Some reviews mentioned issues if you plug it in and immediately start setting it up. I did not have any issues there. I did plug it in and let it sit for 15 minutes before calibrating.
I do leave it plugged in. Side note, I have had two or three power outages (lightning). After each outage the turned off plugged in machine turns back on when the power turns back on. Just a minor annoying little thing.
The good:
I like the calibrate feature. If I have a super fine powder, it calibrates its throw speed for that powder. If I run a coarse powder, its no problem. Calibrates nicely.
I have built over 100 loads with it now (I kinda do it now because I can, not necessarily need to) and have had maybe 5 under charges (never more then .1 grain), a tap on the trickle pipe and it drops enough to hit the mark. I have only ever had one overcharge (it screams at you) and it was by .1 gr.
Has a cool drain tube thing to dump the powder back into the jug when done using it.
The bad:
The cool drain tube thing is cool and all, but it is extremely easy to forget things are open when dumping powder in (see attached picture). Yes that is operator error, but the valve should be a little more obvious as to what position it is in.
The buttons on the screen are hard to push, and easy to mush the wrong one. I would like it a lot better if it had like a calculator buttons or something.
The phone application is stupid. It offers the exact same functionality as the buttons on the dropper. The only reason I would want to plug my phone into a powder dropper is if it rocked my world. One way to rock my world is if I was able to program my stepped charge increments. My world is not rocked. It is very solid. In fact, I am remembering that I have that stupid application, so after posting this it will be getting deleted.
Overall, I am very happy with it.
Ps: the picture is mid throw, so it shows a low charge still.
So, stories aside:
Some reviews mentioned issues if you plug it in and immediately start setting it up. I did not have any issues there. I did plug it in and let it sit for 15 minutes before calibrating.
I do leave it plugged in. Side note, I have had two or three power outages (lightning). After each outage the turned off plugged in machine turns back on when the power turns back on. Just a minor annoying little thing.
The good:
I like the calibrate feature. If I have a super fine powder, it calibrates its throw speed for that powder. If I run a coarse powder, its no problem. Calibrates nicely.
I have built over 100 loads with it now (I kinda do it now because I can, not necessarily need to) and have had maybe 5 under charges (never more then .1 grain), a tap on the trickle pipe and it drops enough to hit the mark. I have only ever had one overcharge (it screams at you) and it was by .1 gr.
Has a cool drain tube thing to dump the powder back into the jug when done using it.
The bad:
The cool drain tube thing is cool and all, but it is extremely easy to forget things are open when dumping powder in (see attached picture). Yes that is operator error, but the valve should be a little more obvious as to what position it is in.
The buttons on the screen are hard to push, and easy to mush the wrong one. I would like it a lot better if it had like a calculator buttons or something.
The phone application is stupid. It offers the exact same functionality as the buttons on the dropper. The only reason I would want to plug my phone into a powder dropper is if it rocked my world. One way to rock my world is if I was able to program my stepped charge increments. My world is not rocked. It is very solid. In fact, I am remembering that I have that stupid application, so after posting this it will be getting deleted.
Overall, I am very happy with it.
Ps: the picture is mid throw, so it shows a low charge still.
