I have been doing annealing using a drill, socket and counting seconds. I'm now thinking about getting a machine. I don't do a ton of annealing so the AMP system seems a bit much at 1400$. A Bench source seems more reasonable at ~500$ but I don't want to spend 500$ if it is not good. What is everyone's thoughts on this?
FWIW:
I was "annealing" brass the way you describe. I had some problems with: 1) overheat and shrivel brass, 2) overheat and anneal the case head (blown primers, supah loose primer pockets), 3) very inconsistent results.
I have an Annealeez now.
Why I'm annealing my brass: I have a 6.5 Grendel I hunt with nightly. I hunt with reloads almost exclusively as I want a non-typical projectile weight (factory ammo not available in this combo). I have a friend who only buys Hornady Black 6.5G 123 ELD-M and who refuses to reload. Ergo, I get a pretty good supply of once-fired Hornady brass from my friend and have maybe as much as 1,000 cases. I will average about 100-150 rounds per month consumption, so I'm not loading each case a lot.
I had a problem with the case mouth splitting. I would find a few cases in my catcher/bucket which were split from time to time. I found cases were split after re-sizing on occasion. I don't mind the re-size splitting as much as the ones which apparently split in the chamber. This was happening with the Hornady 6.5G brass way too often. I believe some of the splits occurred on the first reloading.
I've been annealing my brass "properly" for the last two sessions of reloading (about 300 rounds total), plus some brass forming for a new 6 ARC, and I've had no problems with the case mouth/neck splitting. It, "annealing", seems to be solving my problem.
The Annealeez : I like the unit. Yes, I paid for it and some guys can't say they bought a ***, but I like it. If I didn't like it I would say so. It's been easy to set up and operate. It can be a bit fiddly to adjust the roller wheels to drop where they need to but they stay once set. I found the whole process to be fairly simple and actually a bit of fun. I did find that, with longer dwell times, the brass was melting the plastic roller wheels a bit. They, Annealeez , sell different thicknesses of wheels for different cases and I should have had a shorter/thinner wheel for the Grendel cases. I put my lower wheel in my lathe and turned it thinner (wish that worked on women) . I can fill the hopper with brass and let it run mostly unsupervised. I have the unit set on a steel work bench near the edge so that the brass, when it falls from the machine, falls into a bucket with water hanging on the edge of the bench. This quenches the brass to reduce the likelihood of trashing the case head (I did that in my manual process and it's not pleasant and I don't want to repeat that).
I don't have any regrets over the Annealeez . For what it cost and that it solves my problem, I'm happy with it. But, this is just my opinion/application.
--HC