Projectile manufacturing machine?

[fabguy]

i know the place that i buy my bullets from were trying to sell their used machines so they can get newer ones, i can ask if you are serious. located in Rosemead,ca

Yes, please do.

[Utah Shooter]

Yes, please do.

I would be curious.

I make my own projectiles for .224 as of right now. Fun, addictive and damn frustrating at times. But when you can make your own out of .22lr cases that can hold .500" moa...... Pretty darn satisfying.

[meaty-btz]

Such devices are three phase powered industrial equipment. They require massive power to operate. This is truly industrial grade stuff.

You need to exert thousands of pounds to form lead and even more for jackets. The swaging dies are made from a very specific metalurgy to withstand the pressures involved. Lead requires a specific amount of time to flow (yes lead and even the copper jacket at these pressures behaves fluidic). Faster requires more pressure. Seriously.. that is a ton of cost. I would estimate a basic setup 10K/hr jacketed bullet assembly line that would also sort good from bad (some kind of QC) and box it without damaging them to run you an easy 3-5 Million. Which in business terms is chump-change. Don't forget the cost of lead, which is best cost in massive ingots. Which means you need a lead wire-drawing machine.. adding that part to your process will run you an easy 1-3 million more. Still chump change but not your "in-home" system. Unless you are selling them all just paying to keep the lights on and the machines operating will hit you hard as hell.

[Lead Waster]

I think the simplest way would probably be to cast the bullets, and then copper plate them. Sure it's not jacketed, but that would work for pistol rounds. But then for pistol, you wouldn't really even need to plate them.

But still, I think plating would be simpler, if possibly way more toxic.

I'm just making this stuff up, I have no idea what it takes to plate small items in large quantities in any uniform way.

[Lead Waster]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39GWlbdAc58

An example of a guy plating a few bullets.

[DarkSoul]

If you are interested in high performance match grade rifle ammo, you could just have them made from solid copper on a CNC lathe. We have a few Mazak lathes that could do this all day long with extreme precision, and depending on the quantity, could possibly be pretty affordable. Not much for "customization" since you would need to do quantity to keep the costs down.