NEW: Area 419 ZERO Turret Press Hands-On

[Music] [Applause] [Music] there has been a ton of anticipation about the all-new precision turret reloading press from area 419 it's called the xero and in this video we're going to get hands on with it [Music] gavin good here from ultimatereloader.com we got a lot to cover in this video a lot of you have been highly anticipating this first hands-on look here at ultimate reloader for the area 419 zero press we're going to get out of the box we're going to get mounted on the dedicated inline fabrication ultramount we're going to do a tech walkthrough it's got some unique features and construction details and of course we're going to load some ammo so let's get straight to it i have not looked in here yet i wanted you guys like i usually try and do oh man look at that to see this with me for the very first time oh man this is so cool this is this isn't just a press it's an experience okay so this is wow this is quite quite the packaging this is some precision cut foam and this thing fits in here oh wow that's quite heavy all right the main press body look at that wow it's got arc a lock on the back if i recall quickly that's for accessories wow you can feel even without the press handle that is that is silky silky smooth we've got nine stations wow all i can say is wow okay the handle appears to be fully adjustable we've got pinch clamps here for ambidextrous operations wow again i'm just i'm wrapping my head around this some mounting hardware we've got a torque screwdriver t-handle arrangement probably a spent primer catcher and some more mounting hardware okay so i've got a little bit of work to do oh also in the outer box was the cover for the press that is a very nice detail with a press like this you don't want it getting dusty and everything getting gummed up wow i'm sorry i'm just still i'm still trying to take this in uh i'm going to do a quick tech deep dive with the area 4119 and then i'm going to come back and walk you through all of the unique details that are built into this press we'll get it mounted on that inline fabrication ultra mount and of course we're going to load ammo so i'm going to go do that tech deep dive i'll be back in just a little bit before we get too far into things let's get this press mounted there's two major steps to mounting the area 4190 to your bench via the inline fabrication ultramount the first major step is to assemble the ultra mount itself now i'm always amazed at the quality of these ultra mounts and how all of the holes magically line up there's a leg on either side and a top plate that's where you're going to start some countersunk screws nylock nuts on the back side and washers those all go together and you keep it a little bit loose because we're going to put this lower tray in place there's four screws with star washers that securely mount this lower tray to the legs then once those are in place we go back and final tighten the main screws with those nylock nuts like i mentioned we're not going to use the bench mounting plate for the zero press because the top plate on the ultra mount takes its place there's four bolts and four washers that go up from the bottom just get the holes aligned perfectly screw those in by hand and then final torque those i'm using the ultimate reloader bench system here so i've got steel t-tracks and i've got these heavy duty hold down clamps that means i can take this press and set it aside take it back use it again in just a moment's notice but you could also use the included holes here there's four of them to screw it down to your reloading bench and that's going to get everything locked up real nice so now that we have the press mounted we can start to talk about all the design details the finishes the features that truly set this press apart from any other turret press so let's talk about the area 4190 press let's talk about features and construction details so this press is a nine station manually indexed turret there are auto indexing turrets out there specifically made by lee this press is indexed by loosening this clamp it's a wedge clamp and when you've got it loosened sufficiently you can index it into all of the different positions all nine of them and then tighten this clamp again the wedge and that locks it very very securely in place it's got the torque feature so it's a torque key there it's got all aluminum construction except a few of the components the press frame and turret are machined from 6061 aluminum whereas the linkage plates are 70-75 the ram is steel that is nitrided there is a linear bearing pressed into the press frame that the ram rides in so you get kind of the best of both worlds you get a very very tight fit with no slop at all but you have very minimal friction when you're actuating the press there's also a bearing in the knob on the end of the press handle and what's really cool about this is that your arm can kind of twist and rotate here as you go up and down cycling the press and you don't have any of that friction with the knob chafing that kind of thing it's just one of those extra details that they put into the press that makes it that much more smooth and more of a pleasure to operate it's got the arc lock rail along the back and in the factory they actually tie this thing to a fixture and are able to assemble the entire press with it secured to the arc lock but the the real purpose for it is so that you can attach accessories are there accessories yet no but there will be at some point i will note that if you look on the xero press product page they make mention of the future edition of inch and a quarter threads these are all standard 7 8 by 14 threads but there also will be inch and a quarter threads this is very interesting when you get into some of the higher end dies like the tribal die sets where they use oversized threads even when they're not intrinsically necessary for higher rigidity there are what's really interesting about this press is just how all of the features come together there's this nice little sort of a drawer if you will that collects the primers if you look in the back of the ram there's a bit of a hole there lines up with a port another hole that's integral in the press frame and they drop down through to this little drawer just another one of those nice details in order to show you how this press works in a bit more detail i want to do a couple things to take off the turret and then to expose one of the bearing packages in the side linkage removing and swapping turrets is really easy all you do is back off this wedge clamp like you normally would for any kind of turret indexing operation i'll actually show you what this looks like it's just got a cutaway here on the bottom and as that is inserted in it's going to pull down on the ball stud and that is what clamps the head in place now you don't want to force this it's got a very precise fit and if you're forcing it you're doing something wrong it's not aligned if you're forcing it so here's the ball bearing and the spring that right up against the detent to perform the indexing you can see here if we move this over there's the the ball stud there this will go right back down now we could have multiple turrets with dies to set up of course make sure that we're down there we've got the ball bearing in place put the wedge clamp back in here actually going to put this back in position number one why not target until we hit the torque stop another interesting aspect of the xero press are all of the bearings that come into play when you toggle the linkages raising and lowering the ram and in order to illustrate this i'm just going to take one of these apart now these are normally greased but area 419 sent this to me dry because they knew i wanted to pull this apart and show you guys so i'm going to grease this later okay so we've got a shoulder bolt here and then if we pull this plate to the side here we've got a couple washers and we've got this thrust roller bearing so we've got a washer that's in there i'm not going to remove that but these thrust roller bearings are critical because they allow there to be no slop in the plates but it allows free motion at the same time without friction and you can see here this is a ball bearing it's the same ball bearing that's used at the bottom of the press where the toggle linkage ties in with the bottom of the ram go ahead and put this back in and these bearings are really what make the press so smooth usually there's a trade-off between the precise fit of different components the ram the linkage and the slop that you're going to encounter and when you put together a press like this with the linear bearing for the ram and then these other bearing packages with the roller thrust bearings and the ball bearings you get something that's very precise and very slick so in preparation for my end to end reloading demo for the xero press i wanted to talk about two things first is the cartridge that i selected and second is the setup process for the zero press so i chose 6 dasher for this demo because of a couple reasons first is i have a 6 dasher rifle that i'm shooting a lot it's the most accurate rifle i own and second i've got a bunch of this alpha munitions 6 dasher brass which has performed incredibly well i thought that would be a great demo platform for the xero press and in terms of setup it's going to be very familiar for any of you that have experience with a traditional turret press or a single stage press with one exception and that's the shell holder typically you slide a shell holder into the ram and it clicks into place well with the area 419 zero press you take off a cap and then there's a c-shaped metal plate that slips into the groove on the bottom of the shell holder you drop that in and then thread that threaded cap back on and tighten it by hand this provides a little bit of inherent float to account for manufacturing and tolerance differences between different brands of shell holders and it keeps things nicely secured and nicely centered then it's time to set up dies and the dies that i'm using for this reloading session are forester there's a full length sizer that i had custom honed for this alpha munitions brass based on the thickness of the case next and so on and so forth for optimal uh neck tension and that kind of thing so i screwed the die down in until it contacted the shell holder i'm using twice fired brass here that i've annealed in the amp mark ii it's an important detail to note because anneal brass is going to have more consistent shoulder bump and i set up the die for 1 000th shoulder bump that means we're pushing that shoulder back one thousandth of an inch and it took a couple adjustments to get that exact shoulder bump but i noticed incredibly consistent shoulder bump from case to case so i was very happy with that then you loosen the wedge clamp and that allows you to index the press to the next station i'm using stations number one and two here then tightened the wedge clamp and ran the cedar down here this is ultra micrometer cedar from forester works very well i'm using the forester rings as well just as a note here so what i like to do is back off the micrometer which is the seating plug and then run a dummy cartridge or a cartridge that i'm replicating i actually had burger 109 ammo with the same base to ogive dimension as this burger 105 ammunition that we're going to load here so i put a completed cartridge in ran the the die down until the sleeve is almost fully up aligned the micrometer scale pointing forward and then turned the micrometer down the micrometer seating stem adjustment until i could feel just a little bit of resistance lock the lock ring and then use a bullet comparator to check that base to ogive to make sure that we've got the appropriate cartridge overall length and corresponding base to ogive measurement with those tools so the die setup part is going to be very familiar it's pretty much identical to a single stage or other typical turret and all of this went together very smoothly and i'm very happy with how all of this feels and when we get into the end to end reloading we'll check out what kind of results we're going to get from this precision setup so let's do that next so i've got five cases here loaded into my loading block these are cases that have been twice fired they've been annealed in the amp annealing mark ii machine and i also applied some imperial case sizing wax like i said i've already set up the sizing die here and what we can do is just check our setup here i have a wilson tools engages case gauge here we can see that the back of the case rim looks good it's between the two steps and if we hold it up we can see that we're good on trim length if it was protruding beyond the high step we know that we need to trim at that point okay very smooth you can feel right when things hit the hard stop 90 degree handle throw it's a good balance between feel and motion optimization after sizing and depriming the cases we're going to reprime them here i'm using the primal rights competition primer seeder which is nice because it's got a hard stop type design it always goes to the same position as opposed to the feel-based solutions where you crush the primer into the pocket you can get good results with both but this is a top notch system here so for charging we're using the amd fx 120i scale which is available from cambridge environmental i'll have a link in the video description for that and the full auto trickler v3 system so here we've got 32.4 grains of vargate you can set that on the bluetooth companion app [Music] and then go ahead and go through the cases one by one and charge them this is great because you're going to get .02 grain accuracy with your powder charge and that's absolutely tremendous all right so we're going to go ahead and repeat that five times so now that we're charged we can see some burger 105 hybrids these are some of the most accurate bullets i've ever shot but before we do that we need to index the seating die into position and then reactivate the clamp it's going to lock us in perfectly wow that is incredibly smooth and i like how positively you can feel that positive stop precision cnc machined bump stops hit the side plates good access too for placing the bullet got a nice generous cutaway here at the bottom there we go our first rounds of precision ammunition off the zero press to evaluate the precision of the cartridges we just loaded on the xero press we're going to look at two things we're going to look at bullet run out and then shoulder bump consistency and to look at the run out i'm going to use this sinclair tool here i'm gonna spin it a little bit looks like we're plus or minus a half of a thousandth on the first one it takes a very precise feel with this gauge to not disrupt the results that one was also plus or minus a half of a thousandth another plus or minus half of a thousandth about the same this dial indicator reads in half thousand increments with the graduations on the dial here so if we're plus or minus one tick approximately that one is just barely over plus or minus a half of a thousandth of an inch so this is at least twice as good in other words half the run out as i would normally see for shoulder bump consistency we're going to use a pair of zero to six inch digital calipers and the hornady headspace comparator kit and i'll just go ahead and take this first cartridge we'll settle this in good zero it out okay we're gonna come back up on that i give the case a little bit of a spin it looks like we're settled in pretty well there at zero now these calipers only have an accuracy of about half of a thousandth of an inch that's one to zero as well so this is not as precise as something like a micrometer is going to be okay within a half of a thousandth zero give it that little last bit of a spin within a half of a thousandth that is absolutely excellent the area 419 zero press is truly a unique offering in this whole ecosystem of reloading press equipment i hope this video was helpful to see all the different features of the press what's included with it what kind of quality ammunition you can load with it if you did like this video please give it a thumbs up also i'd love to know what do you think about this press how do you think this press compares to some of the other ultra precision presses that you've seen or that you've used please drop a comment and we'll start a discussion don't forget to subscribe with notifications because i've got a lot more related content coming up with area 419 gear and using the xero press for a variety of different loading applications i hope you'll stay tuned and watch those videos also got ultimate reloader shirts at the ultimate reloader store i'm on patreon we've got links to product pages and a full article down there in the video description thank you for watching until next time happy shooting and happy reloading [Music] you

Channel: gavintoobe

Views: 81,145

Rating: 4.8765216 out of 5

Keywords: Area 419 Arcalock, Area 419 Maverick, Area 419 ZERO Press, CNC Machined, Precision Reloading Press, Reloading, Reloading Blog, Reloading Press, Reloading Videos, Ultimate Reloader, Precision Reloading, F-Class, Benchrest

Id: VFFQOJdusmc

Length: 22min 15sec (1335 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020