digital powder dispensers/ scales

[indydave]

so we have digital auto weighing used a lyman 1200 for years looking to upgrade
lyman gen6
hornady
remington

so the good the bad and the ugly of these 3 choices?

 

[ckcollins2003]

I have the Hornady and I cannot recommend it. If you let it warm up for about 2 hours, you might get it to not over throw too many times, but from what it weighed on it's scale to my RCBS, it was always off by at least .2 grains. Not a big deal unless you are loading precision rounds.

It does best with ball powder. It's horrible with flake powder. Stick powder is hit or miss depending on the day. I've also had days where it just wouldn't even let me calibrate it. I eventually just stopped using it and went back to my old trusted RCBS scale.

A good friend of mine has the RCBS Chargemaster and it does a great job. If I were to buy another one, I'd go that route.

 

[DadSmith]

I have the Hornady and I cannot recommend it. If you let it warm up for about 2 hours, you might get it to not over throw too many times, but from what it weighed on it's scale to my RCBS, it was always off by at least .2 grains. Not a big deal unless you are loading precision rounds.

It does best with ball powder. It's horrible with flake powder. Stick powder is hit or miss depending on the day. I've also had days where it just wouldn't even let me calibrate it. I eventually just stopped using it and went back to my old trusted RCBS scale.

A good friend of mine has the RCBS Chargemaster and it does a great job. If I were to buy another one, I'd go that route.

Yep I have the Hornady as well it's kind of a disappointment. I load short and trickle in the proper load.
I wonder if I sent it in to be checked if they would get it throwing properly.

 

[ckcollins2003]

Yep I have the Hornady as well it's kind of a disappointment. I load short and trickle in the proper load.
I wonder if I sent it in to be checked if they would get it throwing properly.

I contacted their CS about mine after the first month or so. Basically got the run around. Now, I haven't tried their newer updated version. Mine is the Lock N Load, but due to my experience with their CS and the product, I'll never be buying their newer version either.

 

[ISP 5353]

I use the RCBS Chargemaster. It is pretty accurate for the money. If you want more precision, throw the charge light and trickle up to the weight.

 

[Bill2905]

I have the RCBS Chargemaster Lite and it's pretty good for most applications. Mine has been reliable. It needs to warm up 20-30 minutes before you use it to prevent drift in readings across your loading session. I recently purchased a higher end digital scale and used it to determine that my Chargemaster delivers powder in a range of +/- 0.05 gr and the average throw weight was about 0.02 gr under the set point.

 

[ranger391xt]

I have the Frankford Arsenal Intellidropper. Like other unite, it needs to warm up for 20 minutes or so. It has a powder calibration feature that allows it to dispense charges, especially larger ones faster.

There is an app that allows you to control the powder measure with your phone.

The spout to drain powder from the unit is the biggest downside.

These units go on-sale at Midway or Amazon from time to time.

 

[bgcatty]

Just got an RCBS Link digital powder unit and so far it works fine. I’ve let it warm up a couple of hours and it’s been very accurate only throwing a couple of charges under which was confirmed by the unit. Since it was new I’ve been checking every couple of loads on a beam scale and another digital scale to check performance. I do believe environmental circumstances affect performance. So I’ve tried to eliminate the common issues as much as possible. Most importantly it must be on a very stable table or work bench.

 

[ilcaveman]

I have the Hornady also, same issues as above. I would not buy it again.

 

[Paul 7.62]

I don't know what your budget is, I would save my nickels and spend a about $1000 and get the Auto-Trickler along with the A&D FX120I scale as a kit from CE scales https://ceproducts.shop/collections/full-reloading-kit. It dispenses powder to the .02 of a grain so you can call it by the kernel on stick powder. The problem I have found with reloading dispensers from the main companies is they stick with load cell technology which needs a small computer program to keep it from drifting and that technology conflicts with trickling powder. The FX-120i is a lab balance that was designed to slowly add weight to it and it doesn't use a load cell but uses magnetic force to weight the load.