Tips Needed for Auto Drum Leaking

Jerzsubbie

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I was using my autodrum with Titegroup and it did just fine, leaked very very little. But now I’m using much finer H110 to load some .300BLK and I was able to recover 7.4gr of leaked powder after loading only 15rd. That is a 3% loss not counting the powder I wasn’t able to sweep up or capture on printer paper on the floor below.

It seems that the plastic drum is not sealing to the edge of the metal powder drop cylinder(??).

Any tips for fixing leaks?

I already bought replacement drums, no real change.
 
After taking it apart, cleaning and thoroughly inspecting it, I found that I had the plastic drum rotating too far up and down resulting in powder finding it’s way out of the lift arm hole.

However, it’s still leaking from the top edge of the drum as it returns to the top/starting position. I can see the powder fall out there but don’t know how to fix it.
 
Yeah, H110 is the worst powder I have seen for this problem. I love the Autodrum for the hard-to-measure stick type powders, but H110 is a pain.

I have used some polishing compound on the drum, to help seat the drum to the housing. It helped a lot but did not completely fix the problem.

The very first Autodrum I bought had a drum with a shiny surface, and it works reasonably well. All the subsequent ones I have purchased appear to have a somewhat rough machined surface to the drum, and they are the ones that leak the most.
 
Yeah, H110 is the worst powder I have seen for this problem. I love the Autodrum for the hard-to-measure stick type powders, but H110 is a pain.

I have used some polishing compound on the drum, to help seat the drum to the housing. It helped a lot but did not completely fix the problem.

The very first Autodrum I bought had a drum with a shiny surface, and it works reasonably well. All the subsequent ones I have purchased appear to have a somewhat rough machined surface to the drum, and they are the ones that leak the most.
I also noticed the rough texture on the drums and thought about trying to smooth them out. I already did some polishing of the measure itself to improve performance with Titegroup.

I may just give my pro auto disc a shot since I can more easily modify it, 3D print custom discs, and sand it down to get a super tight fit.

I tried looking at other measures but don’t know which will work with my Lee Turret. If anyone has some specific recommendations of other case activated measure that work well with H110, I’m all ears.
 
Ive got dillon chargebars, redding BR dropper, and Lee Auto Drums. The Lees are the most accurate and repeatable. But nothing beats weighing. Yes my drums leak but not that much.
 
I tried looking at other measures but don’t know which will work with my Lee Turret. If anyone has some specific recommendations of other case activated measure that work well with H110, I’m all ears.
Case activated measures, as far as I know, need the specific die/funnel/expander etc. from the same manufacturer. It might be possible to adapt a hand-operated measure to fit the Lee powder-thru expander, though. I think I have even seen where one person mounted a regular measure above the press, and when the turret was in the expander position the measure would drop powder into the funnel in the expander die, manually operated.

I use my LCT to load 44mag, but I do it in single-stage mode and batch-load those since I generally only load 50-100 at a time anyway. I do the powder drops with my RCBS Uniflow. (I also size in two steps, but that is another subject).
 
I bought a Lee Auto Drum to load rifle ammo instead of having to change the rotor in my Hornady measure that I use for pistol ammo. One rifle cartridge I load is .300 Blackout and H110 is one of the go-to powders for that cartridge. I experienced some leakage and began reading up on the issue.

One tip I read was to run some powdered graphite through the measure. I tried it but the graphite wanted to bridge rather than flow.

Some folks removed the poly wiper and lapped the drum in the measure body. Supposedly that helps but I've not attempted it yet. I may try it before I load my next batch.
 
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