AMP Press

Some lures are made to catch fish and some are made to catch fisherman. That said if you think it matters it probably matters.

Completely depends upon you and your equipments ability to tell the difference.

I suppose I just don't know. I find it somewhat interesting.

Tiny Tim said:

Completely depends upon you and your equipments ability to tell the difference.

Click to expand...

I suppose I just don't know. I find it somewhat interesting that I spend lots of time and energy, preparing brass, getting an exact power charge and then I just plop a bullet on top of the cartridge and use my zero press with Hornaday match grade dies to seat the bullet. There's no real Emphasis on having a perfectly straight bullet.
Nor a perfectly tensioned seat

Eric Cortina has a video on his. I believe Greg at Primal Rights has some good info on them.

Just too far down the rabbit hole for me. But I'm not a high level competitive shooter, nor will I be. I think that is where the true benefit may be seen.

Yup.
I saw that video and that's where I picked up that Amp has such a press.
I think it's a little far down for me too unless some of you indicated that it is a game changer.
Without unqualified success stories I'll stick with my current setup.
Thanks.
T

You are going to have to be very confident in your abilities to tell if it is helping or not.

You will also need to be able to trouble shoot your findings/ readings... neck prep/ thickness/ lube/ chamfer....etc

You have to ask yourself what you hope to gain? Identify rounds that could be flyers? Identify problems or inconsistency in your process?

That will take hundreds of rounds.... that's why you see competitors using it. They shoot thousands of rounds a month and are confident in their systems. So they can trust their verification process.

Honestly, it is similar to the CPS to me. It is beyond my ability to test competently. Think about it. I can test out the value of std seater dies vs Hornady type sliding sleeve. I can prove that the Forster system is better. I doubt I can see the Wilson benefit, let alone the AMP.

People say the can say they need the AMP, or see its value, but show me the shot data. I doubt it.

I think we have too many options to really prove them out by testing. Then it becomes spending more money for complications to the process that are unproven. Hmm.

I recently purchased one. I did some testing with my 260 Rem. I made 5 batches of 20 cartridges at the same time. I used the same box of primers, same powder, same box of bullets seated to an established seating depth at an established powder charge. I tested case preparation on that box of 1x brass. I Buy my brass in lots and I tend to shoot everything 1 box at a time so they all have the same number of firings.

Anyway, the amp press is a handy tool for analyzing your process and how different case preparations can lead to different or widely varying seating pressures. You can for sure look at the way your case preparation affects your performance over the chronograph and on target. The problem is that it is a lot of money to spend for little to no gain.

just for reference I tested:
Sizing first, then annealing
Annealing then sizing
Annealing, sizing, annealing again
Annealing, sizing, annealing again and tumbling in walnut
Sizing without annealing

I later ran some cases with:
Annealing, resizing, graphite lube and mandreled necks......I ran nylon brushed and unbrushed
Resizing, graphite lube and mandreled necks.....Again, nylon brushed and unbrushed.

I was honestly kind of disappointed. The way I've been doing it for years is yielded the most consistent seating pressures. The problem was, There is decent window where seating pressure actually made a difference, and not in a good way.

To preface, I had a dirty rifle, I ran the bronze brush through 5 times followed by 3 dry patches. I shot 3 berger factory 260 rem...This was done before each new group to keep things as fair and scientific as possible.

The thing I found was, that seating pressure caused little change until I got down to the lowest seating pressure rounds. The annealed, resized, annealed and walnut tumbled cases. They seated around 20-30lbs of force and the ES grew a little, but the GROUP openeded up quite a bit.

The same thing happened with the rounds that seated in the 85lb and above range which happened to be a I think 3 rounds of my Anneal, resize and load group. The seating forces were very consistent around 60lbs , albeit higher than the rest. I culled the ones that were "big" outliers. It just so happens that when I got about 20lbs higher in force the velocities spiked. The groups, however, didn't really grow from what I could see.

looking at the graphs is the most confusing part. Admittedly I sorted "culled" cases the same way I classified the other groups of seating force...max lbs of force as shown on the tail end of the seating operation. I honestly am not sure if you're supposed to look at the initial force or overall force. However, Initial force was certainly different with many of the above preparation methods.

A long winded way of saying, it's neat, it's a great analytical tool and for me at least, it sped up my reloading. Before, I would throw a charge with my supertrickler, wait for it to stabilize, dump it into a case, put it in the tray, when all rounds were charged I'd go to the other bench and seat bullets. Now, I throw a charge, put the previous case in the die and hit go. Dump the next charge and keep it going, it doesn't disturb my scale. I handle the cases fewer times, I cull and mark the weird stuff; and can document it later if it did something way out there. It has made the ammo I produce more consistent length for sure. Other than that....It has just made loading faster, not any better.