I bet I get asked at least 10 times per show if I carry FRT, Super Safety or some other form of forced reset. To wit, the answer is NO. It's not because I don't care for them or anything or have anything against them, it's because they are the antithesis of a precision shooting instrument, they don't have any business in any of the rifles that we build and they are generally a time waster for your bang to buck ratio on your AR platform build. If you have one of these though, please hit me up or Defender ammo so we can stock you up on your blaster fodder. Preferably me since then we can make a couple bucks while you are deleting the rifling from your barrel.

So mass produced ammo should be made on something like a Dillon 1050, Dillon 1100, Mark 7, Dillon 750, Hornady LNL AP, RCBS 7 station etc. Do not produce mass ammo on a smaller machine. If you look at how much ammo costs compared to your time, you are doing yourself a huge disservice by using a small machine or single stage when making fodder ammo. Even for super high dollar guns. So let's say you are using a Nighthawk, Staccato, CZ, Alien or another exotic pistol. You can purchase ammo for these around .25- .30 per round day in and day out. You pay for components and you spend .06 for a primer, .08 per bullet, .02 for cases (since you are reusing and amortizing your brass), and .03 for powder. You are into each cartridge for .19 for components. So you are saving somewhere aroung .07 per round. If you can do 100 rounds in an hour (realistic on a single stage press including inspection and cleaning time etc), you have just paid yourself $7 for that hour, minus any costs for recouping equipment costs, mistakes, overruns, gas, travel, shipping, taxes etc. So lets say real savings is $2.50 per box. So you are valuing your time at $5 an hour basically. This is why if you are not producing ammo at 600 rounds an hour or more you are just basically burning through your free time to a zero sum game. At 600 or more per hour you are basically paying yourself somewhere around $35 an hour to reload your own ammo.

Now if you are doing something like precision ammo (read bottleneck long range cartridges) then this changes things since there are a ton of other steps that are very labor intensive. You need to anneal (AGS, Burstfire, AMP), inside and outside case neck chamfer and trimming (Giruad, RCBS match trimmer, Hornady precision trimmer, Henderson Precision trimmer), quality brass (Lapua, Peterson cartridge, Alpha, ADG, Starline, and Hornady maybe), Quality bullets (Hornady ELD, Berger, Sierra, Barnes), primers (CCI, Federal, Fiocchi, WInchester, Remington), Powder (Winchester, Vihtavuori, Shooters World, Hodgdon), good quality reloading parts (Forster, Redding, Area 419, Short Action Customs, RCBS Matchmaster, Whidden, Wilson, and some Hornady), and don't forget you need high quality scales, tricklers, a solid single stage machine or the best multi stage or turret press you can find.

Machines:
Dillon 750, SAC Nexus Press, Area 419 Zero press, Frankford PRECISION (only) single or turret press, Redding T7 turret press with CNC machined heads, Forster Co-ax, The Arbor presses, and maybe a solid RCBS (Although this one will be super slow).
Powder Measures and scales:
A&D FX120i with an autotrickler, RCBS Matchmaster, Frankford Intellidropper, Creedmoor TRX-925, Sartorius, and if you happen to find yourself with an extra $5K then the prometheus.

Yes it adds up in a quick hurry. My full disclosure is this is my setup: AGS Annealer, Giraud case trimmer, Dillon 750 with custom CNC toolheads, Area 419 Zero Press, Inline fabrication machine mounts and handles, A&D FX120i with MacDonald Autotrickler V4, SAC Dies with variable shoulder, Area 419 funnels, SAC Mandrels, Lyman ultrasonics cleaner, Hornady precision micrometer ELD bullet seater, and Teslong fiber optic inspection camera. Mark 7 Apex-10 Motorized with all sensors and electronic laser checks for .223 Match and .300 Blackout.

Components: Alpha Brass, Peterson Brass, Lapua Brass, CCI Primers, Winchester Powder, Hodgdon Powder, Vihtavuori Powder, Berger bullets, Hornady ELD-M and A-tip bullets, and Sierra Bullets.

Utilizing Short Action Customs dies:

Never seen any issue with the SAC dies. I like being able to dial in my shoulder bump with them in .001 increments. I also use a SAC decapping mandrel inside the die so that works a couple things at a time. You could also use the standard mandrel if you are using new brass and didn't need to decap. Now don't get me wrong there are lots of other great dies, but I do appreciate the setup aspect of the SAC dies and they do work well. If I was going with a different one i'd say any of the bushing dies from Area 419, Forster, Redding, RCBS Matchmaster, or similar.

As far as the super trickler, I have never tried that one. I do know that the autotrickler v4 (My current setup for precision) works as advertised and throws my perfect charge in about 6 seconds each time. So it's running faster than I can pull the handle and set a bullet on. It is also accurate each throw to within .04 of a grain or basically a single kernel of Varget or a couple Kernels of like staball match. Much more accurate than even my Frankford Intellidropper (which was accurate but slow - About 25-30 seconds per throw). So I used to use 3-4 intellidropppers to speed things up, but they are about $225 each. The FX120i and Autotrickler V4 is about $950 and has the benefit of a single scale to calibrate versus 3-4. Don't get me wrong, $900 + is insane for a scale until you see the Prometheus scales are leased typically and run over $4k each and you don't really own it.

Annealers:

As far as the AMP versus the AGS annealer, my AGS was around $250 and works flawlessly, and the cheapest amp right now is $1800. So thats a lot of brass annealing to make up for. Since it's an add on item I don't really see the bang for buck aspect. Also my AGS is fast with it doing a case about every nine seconds continuously so i'm completing a bag of 100 cases in about 14 minutes when annealing. The AGS also lets me setup about 10 cartridges at a time on the platen to rotate in and out as opposed to 1 each on the AMP with the little doohickey you place the case into. Lastly if I was gonna go the induction annealer route I would probably go the burstfire induction annealer at about half the cost with a feeder or the ADG ARC annealer at the same price that includes a case feeder in the price I believe.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.