Quote from Reloader on October 7, 2012, 12:49 am

I purchased my Dillon 450 back in 1991 or 1992, can't remember exactly. A older gentleman died and his wife was selling his things. I bought all his reloading supplies, which included this progressive press. I was just getting into reloading and a progressive press compared to my old single stage Lee was the difference between a BMW and a Hyundai Exel, lol!!!! This man had a log book and he was keeping track of the rounds he had loaded with the press. Sounded like a good idea at the time so I kept doing it. A friend of my son's was over today  (19 years old )and he asked me what the Log Book was for? After telling him, he asked if I ever added them all up. NO, I hadn't, next thing I know he has a calculator and he is pounding keys. Four and a half pages of multiple entries on each line, took about an hour and even I was shocked. It was 98,563 times. The old man had recently bought the 450, or he never used it much, he had only written down 2,000 rounds. I thought maybe 50,000 but sure not that far over. I became disabled at a young age, and I turned to relaoding as a hobby and I could sell some for some extra spending cash which didn't make me feel so useless.

Now this 98,563 is just the completed rounds produced by this press. If you counted the cycling action that comes from setting the press up and cases that never got counted, this press is easily over 100,000 cycles. If everything goes as planned it will have over 100,000 completed rounds in the next week. This is  amazing quality, because this press works just as smooth as the day I bought it. I mean even the paint is in great shape. The very few failures that I have had were all my fault. I was shocked when the customer service agent refused my offer for payment. This happened on three occasions for very minor issues. My hat's off to the crew at Dillon, they are taking modern materials and manufacturing skills and combining good old fashion customer service and that is something to be very proud of. I have no reason to believe that it will continue to operate just as smooth after another 100,000 completed rounds.

Now I will be honest, everytime I look at your catalog I want to oder a 550 frame, as well as every time I go from pistol to .223 calibers. I actually like the idea of taking the time to manually set the bullet on top of the casing and loading the primer. Besides it takes longer to relaod. If it were any quicker I would have to buy that much more of the components, lol!!! I just wanted to bragg I little bit. I don't know of any other fixture in my home or shop that will cycle 100,000 times and still be as functional as new. Maybe someone could pass this on to Mike as well. Why would any one buy something other than Dillon?

Kevin Lancaster

Here is a photo of my 450

[img]http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q32/NCHornet/Dillon1.jpeg[/img]