Yeah. I know. Take it in. That makes sense. And I've had very good treatment there myself...provided I don't mention that I've automated the press. Then they are polite but insistent that the automation is the problem and we don't really make any progress after that revelation.
I will take it in if I can't solve this any other way. But it takes more than trivial effort to detach the 1050 from the Mark 7 system. Then revert back to hand press mode, take it in, and demonstrate the problem, then presumably reverse that process once they fix it (or after think they fix it). If you add up all that time, it'll be at least 4-6 hours. Time is my issue. I have so little of it! That's actually the reason for automation. I can make over 3k rounds (a busy month shooting) in 2 hours of press time. Not counting the maintenance, cleaning, case prep, etc.
There there is the Dillon elephant in the room: it could be automation that is the problem...if I revert to hand press and the problem fails to re-materialize, I need to re-automate and troubleshoot in that form to fix the problem. It worked for 150k rounds of automation up until last month, so there is something to fix somewhere...
The 1050 has only a 1 year warranty, and, if you are a recognized good customer and are nice, they often will provide freebies for many things like split rings, blue tips, a new powder hopper if your gets stained over time.....but they don't swap out used primer slides or worn out primer slide spring arm assemblies, etc. I'm willing to empirically buy some likely replacement parts before I resort to taking the press in. In fact I just did that on Saturday; I bought a new primer slide and the spring arm assembly. Not cheap but more than worth 6 hours of my time. The guy there was very helpful and sort of agreed that if I brought the parts back and they weren't obviously 'used' that I could get a refund. So I'll compare these new parts to my old parts, see if there are obvious wear marks that might explain this 1/50 priming issue or such, and go from there.
I hear the 1100 coming out soon is a 'beefier' version of the 1050...perhaps they are accepting the fact that automation will be a reality despite their official opposition to this concept. I dunno.
If things keep happening like this - which I have to assume are simply signs of repeated wear and tear (I've over 300k rounds on it now) - I may actually have to conclude that I accept Dillon's assertion: their presses really weren't designed to be automated, or at least automated for >150k rounds. I might look into a Mark 7 Evolution press instead. The problem with that is $ and the time it'll take me to come up to speed on THAT new system. This 1050 (it's almost 10 years old) took me months to really understand all the nuances and how it really works. I have less free time now than then.....
Best to all...
C
