Dillon Problems
- Thread starter KEYBEAR
- Start date
stubbicatt
New member
I had this issue with that device on my 1050. I glued a 200 grain 45 bullet to the top of the plastic "primer follower." It seemed to me that the follower didn't have enough mass to reliably trigger the switch.
Perhaps this fix will work for you too.
Perhaps this fix will work for you too.
Its a logical place to start.
I know of some who put a .45 ACP case over the "rubber" weight to make it drop with more pressure.
I'm trying to help, but you just seem to want to bitch.
Lets try a different question if you can get past being snippy, shall we?
Battery type position & contacts?
I know of some who put a .45 ACP case over the "rubber" weight to make it drop with more pressure.
I'm trying to help, but you just seem to want to bitch.
Lets try a different question if you can get past being snippy, shall we?
Battery type position & contacts?
wogpotter
Sorry but Do you really think I just looked at it and thought this will not work .
After number four (4) I can not understand the thing .
I bought a 4 pack of new AAA Batteries Dated good until 2017 . I tested every battery I tried in the buzzer none worked .
Dillon is saying they tested the buzzer before shipping ?? Ok but I ask if it was working and if they tested the three I sent back ?
No answer
Sorry but Do you really think I just looked at it and thought this will not work .
After number four (4) I can not understand the thing .
I bought a 4 pack of new AAA Batteries Dated good until 2017 . I tested every battery I tried in the buzzer none worked .
Dillon is saying they tested the buzzer before shipping ?? Ok but I ask if it was working and if they tested the three I sent back ?
No answer
No I don't but you were there & we weren't. The only way we can help is to ask questions.
Why?
Because without the answers there's nothing we can do because of a lack of information.
Basically the thing is as simple as a flashlight. Battery goes to buzzer through switch, 3 components.
Possible problems.
Battery dead or inserted reversed.
Battery contacts dirty or corroded.
Switch broken.
Lever stiff or jammed.
To fix it you need a systematic approach, not ranting at strangers.
Try battery both ways.
Try new battery.
test switch for continuity with meter.
Press micro-switch button, if it buzzes its the lever.
Why?
Because without the answers there's nothing we can do because of a lack of information.
Basically the thing is as simple as a flashlight. Battery goes to buzzer through switch, 3 components.
Possible problems.
Battery dead or inserted reversed.
Battery contacts dirty or corroded.
Switch broken.
Lever stiff or jammed.
To fix it you need a systematic approach, not ranting at strangers.
Try battery both ways.
Try new battery.
test switch for continuity with meter.
Press micro-switch button, if it buzzes its the lever.
wogpotter I do thank you for the interest and most of the things you have suggested . But all have been suggested in this thread already . (tried)
I have bought new AAA Batteries I have put them in both ways I have pushed in on the switch very little more I can do . I ask if anyone else had any problem like this and got the answer NO .
I also ask Dillon if the Buzzers I sent back were tested and did they work and got no answer .
After four new Buzzers and a number of phone calls with no real answer I am at the end .
The loader is working OK I will just keep an eye on the primers and keep loading .
Thanks one & all
I have bought new AAA Batteries I have put them in both ways I have pushed in on the switch very little more I can do . I ask if anyone else had any problem like this and got the answer NO .
I also ask Dillon if the Buzzers I sent back were tested and did they work and got no answer .
After four new Buzzers and a number of phone calls with no real answer I am at the end .
The loader is working OK I will just keep an eye on the primers and keep loading .
Thanks one & all
This is what it looks like with the correct polarity of the battery.
We know that you do not have a volt meter, so maybe you find something in your house that also uses AAA batteries, and is working to rob a battery out of and lift the switch out and put the tab with the wire comming from the buzzer directly onto the positive terminal of the battery with enough force to push the negative pole into the spring below.
If it goes "beep" the switch is the problem. If it plays dead the buzzer is the problem. Doesn't really matter either way as you don't have the parts or soldering iron and a trip back to Dillon (again) is what your looking at.
I answered your PM and included my zip code, if you want to do the deal don't worry about the alarm. I'll figure it out when it gets here.
We know that you do not have a volt meter, so maybe you find something in your house that also uses AAA batteries, and is working to rob a battery out of and lift the switch out and put the tab with the wire comming from the buzzer directly onto the positive terminal of the battery with enough force to push the negative pole into the spring below.
If it goes "beep" the switch is the problem. If it plays dead the buzzer is the problem. Doesn't really matter either way as you don't have the parts or soldering iron and a trip back to Dillon (again) is what your looking at.
I answered your PM and included my zip code, if you want to do the deal don't worry about the alarm. I'll figure it out when it gets here.
You are welcome, I have taken on problems that were not my own, they belonged to someone or a group of 'someone's' that were complaining to me. There were times when we got 'to the problem' I was there but the complainers never showed. I have had a few very interesting days.
F. Guffey
Keybear,
I very much appreciate your frustration that something this simple isn't fixed. It's quite odd, but please keep in mind that nobody else knows what you did or didn't do or what Dillon did or didn't tell you to do until you relay it to us. It's so simple you may expect we should all assume you tried everything obvious. But when I part-timed in TV repair shops in college, you'd be surprised how many times I saw a trained, experienced technician spend fifteen minutes getting very frustrated at being unable to identify the cause of a dead device before finally realizing he'd never plugged it into an outlet. Call it brain "gas" or whatever, it happens to everyone once in awhile, and the simple questions are just to eliminate those possibilities and not to make you feel like an idiot. So please have patience with them, taking solice in the fact that even a trained technician can miss the obvious.
In this instance it seems to me that you are down to one of a few possibilities. Since several units did not work, and since you tried batteries that were known to successfully power other devices, it isn't going to be something you failed to do correctly. Period. The explanation is going, therefore, to be academic to us. Dillon may have got a bad lot of buzzers. An old fashioned electromechanical buzzer doesn't care about polarity, but they aren't used much these days because they draw a lot of current. I just happened to get a replacement buzzer from Dillon earlier this year, and the familiar little white cube is gone and a short cylindrical piezoelectric sounder with built-in transistor drive oscillator has replaced it. These do require the polarity be correct, and if they purchased a lot with the colored wires reversed, that would stop it. I once found a name-brand 9V battery with its + and - snap terminals terminals reversed and therefore providing the wrong voltage polarity to anything you snapped it into. Murphy's law is alive and well.
In the case of a piezo electric transducer, it will not work and I though might be damaged if the polarity is wrong, though I wouldn't expect anything less than 3 volts in reverse polarity to damage the conventional bipolar transistors used in these things. So, I decided to test that on my working unit just to see what happened. It did no harm. So I think you can try that safely if you haven't already (I forget if I read that you did).
But wrong polarity its not the only thing that can jam these little guys up. They can be damped out of oscillation by the glue some use to attach them to their mounts if it smeared out over the surface. If that happened, the buzzer should make a click sound when you close the switch, though you may have trouble hearing it over the click of the switch itself. If they are soldered to their lead wires, using a little too high temperature solder or too hot soldering iron can cause the deposited silver that comprises the contact surface to flake off the piezoceramic material's surface, breaking the connection. If there is transistor damage, that would require a multi-meter with a diode test function to verify the circuit is open in both directions. If you know somebody with one, you can try that, but the exercise is really academic.
I am dismayed that Dillon doesn't seem to have tested your returns to confirm your results. I suspect the way their warranty service folk are trained is not to mess around with parts, but just to send another one, and that solves the problem 99.99% of the time. But if they got a bad lot of components, that doesn't help. On the other hand, if they got a bad lot of components, you'd figure they'd have had similar complaints from others by now and had a correction in place. So I don't really know what the deal is here.
While it would be interesting to know the exact nature of the problem, the practical thing for you to do at this point is to write snail mail to the president of the company and ask him to please, please put a battery into one of these things, test that it actually buzzes and, if so, to send it to you and to please include the battery he used just to be sure there is no possible confusion. You can copy the salient parts of this post to him if you wish, as I am an electrical engineer by training and the fact that I can see ways in which they could have a component problem may stir them to try the test and to check other units in stock. They may be getting the soldering work done by an assembly house who is supplying the components and who isn't testing properly. The president should want to know that if it's so.
I very much appreciate your frustration that something this simple isn't fixed. It's quite odd, but please keep in mind that nobody else knows what you did or didn't do or what Dillon did or didn't tell you to do until you relay it to us. It's so simple you may expect we should all assume you tried everything obvious. But when I part-timed in TV repair shops in college, you'd be surprised how many times I saw a trained, experienced technician spend fifteen minutes getting very frustrated at being unable to identify the cause of a dead device before finally realizing he'd never plugged it into an outlet. Call it brain "gas" or whatever, it happens to everyone once in awhile, and the simple questions are just to eliminate those possibilities and not to make you feel like an idiot. So please have patience with them, taking solice in the fact that even a trained technician can miss the obvious.
In this instance it seems to me that you are down to one of a few possibilities. Since several units did not work, and since you tried batteries that were known to successfully power other devices, it isn't going to be something you failed to do correctly. Period. The explanation is going, therefore, to be academic to us. Dillon may have got a bad lot of buzzers. An old fashioned electromechanical buzzer doesn't care about polarity, but they aren't used much these days because they draw a lot of current. I just happened to get a replacement buzzer from Dillon earlier this year, and the familiar little white cube is gone and a short cylindrical piezoelectric sounder with built-in transistor drive oscillator has replaced it. These do require the polarity be correct, and if they purchased a lot with the colored wires reversed, that would stop it. I once found a name-brand 9V battery with its + and - snap terminals terminals reversed and therefore providing the wrong voltage polarity to anything you snapped it into. Murphy's law is alive and well.
In the case of a piezo electric transducer, it will not work and I though might be damaged if the polarity is wrong, though I wouldn't expect anything less than 3 volts in reverse polarity to damage the conventional bipolar transistors used in these things. So, I decided to test that on my working unit just to see what happened. It did no harm. So I think you can try that safely if you haven't already (I forget if I read that you did).
But wrong polarity its not the only thing that can jam these little guys up. They can be damped out of oscillation by the glue some use to attach them to their mounts if it smeared out over the surface. If that happened, the buzzer should make a click sound when you close the switch, though you may have trouble hearing it over the click of the switch itself. If they are soldered to their lead wires, using a little too high temperature solder or too hot soldering iron can cause the deposited silver that comprises the contact surface to flake off the piezoceramic material's surface, breaking the connection. If there is transistor damage, that would require a multi-meter with a diode test function to verify the circuit is open in both directions. If you know somebody with one, you can try that, but the exercise is really academic.
I am dismayed that Dillon doesn't seem to have tested your returns to confirm your results. I suspect the way their warranty service folk are trained is not to mess around with parts, but just to send another one, and that solves the problem 99.99% of the time. But if they got a bad lot of components, that doesn't help. On the other hand, if they got a bad lot of components, you'd figure they'd have had similar complaints from others by now and had a correction in place. So I don't really know what the deal is here.
While it would be interesting to know the exact nature of the problem, the practical thing for you to do at this point is to write snail mail to the president of the company and ask him to please, please put a battery into one of these things, test that it actually buzzes and, if so, to send it to you and to please include the battery he used just to be sure there is no possible confusion. You can copy the salient parts of this post to him if you wish, as I am an electrical engineer by training and the fact that I can see ways in which they could have a component problem may stir them to try the test and to check other units in stock. They may be getting the soldering work done by an assembly house who is supplying the components and who isn't testing properly. The president should want to know that if it's so.
Jim Watson
New member
You guys jinxed me.
The primer buzzer on my 550 quit today. Battery checks good.
I doubt Dillon makes them, some cheapo contract buzzerwerke.
Phew, escaped the jinx. I rubbed up the contacts and tried again. Bzzzz.
The primer buzzer on my 550 quit today. Battery checks good.
I doubt Dillon makes them, some cheapo contract buzzerwerke.
Phew, escaped the jinx. I rubbed up the contacts and tried again. Bzzzz.
Last edited:
Geezerbiker
New member
There's a bunch of 1.5v buzzers on eBay. Have you considered trying to fix it yourself?
Tony
Tony
We are talking about a tool that deals with primers. We are talking about a tool that opens and closes a circuit and sparks. Tons of gigs have been used up on the Internet about the spark and static electricity, so let us put it all together.
It is possible the original poster did not remove the small piece of tape that protects/prevents the battery from making contact. Because of the speed of electricity it is difficult to prevent a spark when contacts open. Then there is the condenser.
As we can see from pictures posted it is a good ideal to remove batteries when not in use for long periods of time.
F. Guffey
It is possible the original poster did not remove the small piece of tape that protects/prevents the battery from making contact. Because of the speed of electricity it is difficult to prevent a spark when contacts open. Then there is the condenser.
As we can see from pictures posted it is a good ideal to remove batteries when not in use for long periods of time.
F. Guffey
The buzzer and battery share the same ground. Did you substitute a light for the buzzer. Check to see if the battery has an insulator on one end.
Complainers do not like complaining to me about batteries. Some times the story is centered about 'it burst into flames' or 'my pocket felt like it was on fire'. Then there is that one about 'the exploding battery'. Then the question that goes something like: "Why do I have to replace the battery, starter and alternator?".
F. Guffey
Then there are instructions, when ignored the instructions become destructions.