"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
On 2010-05-17, Buerste wrote:
The thing that scares me the most in my reloading endeavors is a squib.
To
visually check every case for the proper amount of powder is inconvenient
and slow.

[ ... ]

I can mount the camera on the ram so it's focus it constant or I can
mount
it to the press if the camera will auto focus fast enough to be useful.
Ideally, the camera would have it's own LED lighting source.

Any recommendations on a camera or refinement of my idea?

A question occurs -- why must it be a USB camera? That would
then require a computer to display it.

I would use a stand-alone camera which puts out standard video,
and couple it to the monitor which is otherwise connected to the nearby
CNC lathe.

And -- such a camera normally does not have an auto-focus. You
just pre-focus it at the right distance and you are in business. (You
may want to make a spacer ring to allow it to focus close enough.

Imagine if the camera took a still at the bottom of the stroke and
instantly
compared the image to a "standard" then sounded an alarm if the image was
too far from the standard and locked the press?

O.K. That would use the computer -- and require some rather
fancy image processing and image-recognition software, too. :-)

Again, a powder-check
die
would do just that but I would not be able to use my bullet feeder or my
separate crimp die.

Understood.

How about a level sensor in the power measure to lock up the
press when the level in the hopper falls below a preset level?
Normally, you are not going to get improper dump of powder until the
supply gets too low to maintain pressure in the hopper.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
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--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

I'm not worried about the hopper running out. The charge is so small that
the hopper is still three quarters full when I'm WAY tired of reloading.
It's the odd happenstance that I don't get a dump or the cycle was out of
the norm. I've only had one squib in 5,000 rounds...one too many!