Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Which progressive reloader to buy?

Dillon. By the way, there are separate stations for seating and crimping on my 550.

Strong recommendation here for a Dillon.

Not at all, the expander ball in station 2 expands the case neck, and the charge is dropped thru the hollow expander, then you rotate to station three, seat the bullet, and when you rotate it to station 4, it crimps the case onto the bullet.

It's really got all you need, unless you want to rig up the trimmer to do rifle cases, but that's best done on a single stage press anyway.

I've had 6 550's 1-650 and 1- 1050. I'm down to 1-550 and 1- 1050. I've loaded in excess of 100,000 rounds on Dillon machines.
The 550 is hands down the best progressive press made.

I have a Dillon 650 with case feeder and it is da berries. Their customer service rocks.

I can load about 600-800 handgun rounds an hour without breaking a sweat. With rifle rounds I size them all, then trim, then return them to the tool with the sizer removed and load them.

I've had a 550 Dillon since 1995, there have been 0 problems with this machine. The one time I had to order a part, was because I broke it being dumb, they sent me a new one at no charge. You can't go wrong with Dillon.

Okay, I also recall that Dillon requires you to use their dies? I guess the hollow expander is one reason. regular 7/8-14 dies do not fit?

Are those hollow expanders removable from the die, so I could modify them if desired?

Dillon, you will not regret it one bit.
GreggH

camdex works great. mine puts out about 55 rounds a min.

Dillion 550b
Dillion has one of the best customer service dept. that I have ever had the pleasure to talk to.

Brutal honesty is best on this type of question; if your using anything other than a dillon, your wasting your time.

+1 on the Dillion and I don't mean "Matt Dillion" either

Only have to use the Dillon "dies" on the Square Deal, not the others. The powder die comes with the caliber conversion kit.

I have a 650 - wouldn't do anything else after this. I use it for pistol and AR .223 loads. With a quick change kit, not bad to go back and forth between calibers.

The top three choices are
Dillon 550B
Dillon 650
anything else along the lines of the RCBS 2000

I have both Dillon 550B and 650.
I like the 550 for it's reliability and ease of taking care of problems without a bunch of histrionics.
The 550 is a simple, durable, reasonably fast progressive, and I consider it the best on the market for it's intended use and speed level.
The only thing I would change owuld be if they would add a fifth station so you could put a powder check die in it.

The 650 is a great fast machine, but it's not tolerant of missteps. I have had a problem with CCI small pistol primers hanging on the decapping pin that get re-seated by the waiting new primer. This lets the primer feed disc rotate around till it drops the primer down a little ramp and most of the time it ski jumps onto the floor. This is the first you know of a problem and then you need to go through your cartridge bin and find the one with the spent primer.
This is not a problem using other brands of small pistol primers, but I had loaded over 2500 rounds of 38 special with the CCI's.
Till I get through these, the 650 and 38's are not my favorite.
I may even just go through the empty 38's I have with a decapping die in my Rockchucker.

No one has the Hornady?

The Dillons seem great but look to be accesory lacking.
The 550 is not self indexing.
and they do not have 5 die stations.

more research ongoing.

I have a Dillon 650, for maybe 12 years now. I've kept it lubed and clean; once I figured out how to run it, it hardly ever burps.
I've never busted anything on it. Not cheap to get started, but completely satisfied with the bang for the buck over what is becoming quite a long run.
After 12 years and plenty of ammo, the only gripe I have is the powder measuring. You have to run the press perfect and use the right powder. Sometimes, especially with stick powders in the smaller calibers, you have to run two cycles, charging by hand. But it still beats the holy crud out of a single stage.
As for the Hornady, my Dad is looking to get one, I think there might be some compromises due to patent issues, the Dillon designs are pretty smart. But I like Hornady dies, Hornady bullets, and don't expect my did to be disappointed at all.