Thread: annealing help please

Originally Posted by andyanimal31

An absolutely awesome read about how amp came to be.

Sent from my SM-A226B using Tapatalk

Just read it myself and agree. Talk about perseverance and kiwi engenuity. Alex and his son Matt aim for perfection and don't stop until they achieve it. Top guys to deal with. The AMP annealer is used by many top tier U.S. competition shooters.

Ingenuity! Lol.
Anyway, well worth the $40 for the book.

Originally Posted by winaa

What he said, this is the most sensible answer in the whole thread.
Like any new skill it takes time to learn, get hands on advice from someone that has experience.

Does it effect the average hunter? Nah. Its a target / reloader's thing.

You are far batter getting a reloader with an amp to do your brass. I would sooner leave my brass alone than anneal with any other method.

Originally Posted by T.FOYE

Does it effect the average hunter? Nah. Its a target / reloader's thing.

You are far batter getting a reloader with an amp to do your brass. I would sooner leave my brass alone than anneal with any other method.

Personal thing mate.
I'm not a target shooter but I anneal for case life.
I understand metallurgy as I've worked in the trade for 30+ years so doing a bit of research flame annealing was a no brainer for me.
Buying a machine worth thousands didn't make economic sense.

I made my own annealer - alot of watching Erik Cortina, and Reese On The Range - between them two, I started putting bits together and this is my current induction annealer - its still a work on progress but I'm no engineer - will sort a way to drop cases once annealed... All parts sourced from Ali Express, apart from the donor surplus PC case of course.
Say what you will with Ali - but Ive been super impressed with parts and costs when compared to such as AMP products - sure its turn key but shit, Ive saved 3/4 of the costs of an AMP building my own, and has 1/10th second timings.

Whats been the most interesting to find is that brass isn't just brass - one manufacture timings can be very different to another manufacturer of same calibre cases indicating very differing alloy compositions that make up rifle case brass.

Latest additions has been to replace the copper tubing, and add water cooling / pump, radiator etc to keep the coil not burning ya fingers and reduce heat transfer to the ZVS board...

Using a 1.2 kw 36vdc 34 Amp power supply into a 1KW ZVS board...
Still rough n ready - the white is plastic trying to be a cone to help bottom fan airflow directly onto the electronic board to help cooling - as I say, work in progress but damn its good and exacting results every time. I just refer to my list Ive complied so far for timings ands adjust the control timer accordingly for different calibre and manufacture of brass... Oh they differ!!


Happy to help or list parts etc...

Originally Posted by Nasty Factory Trigger

I made my own annealer - alot of watching Erik Cortina, and Reese On The Range - between them two, I started putting bits together and this is my current induction annealer - its still a work on progress but I'm no engineer - will sort a way to drop cases once annealed... All parts sourced from Ali Express, apart from the donor surplus PC case of course.
Say what you will with Ali - but Ive been super impressed with parts and costs when compared to such as AMP products - sure its turn key but shit, Ive saved 3/4 of the costs of an AMP building my own, and has 1/10th second timings.

Whats been the most interesting to find is that brass isn't just brass - one manufacture timings can be very different to another manufacturer of same calibre cases indicating very differing alloy compositions that make up rifle case brass.

Latest additions has been to replace the copper tubing, and add water cooling / pump, radiator etc to keep the coil not burning ya fingers and reduce heat transfer to the ZVS board...

Using a 1.2 kw 36vdc 34 Amp power supply into a 1KW ZVS board...
Still rough n ready - the white is plastic trying to be a cone to help bottom fan airflow directly onto the electronic board to help cooling - as I say, work in progress but damn its good and exacting results every time. I just refer to my list Ive complied so far for timings ands adjust the control timer accordingly for different calibre and manufacture of brass... Oh they differ!!


Happy to help or list parts etc...

Attachment 199470

I'd be interested in any info you have on this please. I know someone else that's done it, but different design to yours. I'm wondering if I can get the nest of both

Originally Posted by Danger Mouse

I'd be interested in any info you have on this please. I know someone else that's done it, but different design to yours. I'm wondering if I can get the nest of both

Sure thing DM - though ideally I don't wish to hijack this thread - perhaps I create a new post and I'll add what I can to it and we'll go from there?

https://www.snipershide.com/shooting...brass.7127870/

Heresy. LOL.

The AMP is not just an annealer, it's a mini lab. The software will analyze a piece of brass from your same batch of brass and give you a .code to get the perfect anneal. This in turn will give the best chance of consistent neck tension., which is one of the main components in accuracy.

If you're into accuracy or making the most accurate ammunition possible, especially for competition or long range shooting, its well worth the cost IMHO. If you're a hunter that uses factory loads or doesn't need that level of accuracy then it's probably not worth the outlay. After all most hunting rifles will be more than accurate enough to kill deer out to 300m or more. Deer won't know the difference between .5 MOA or 1.5 MOA.

Originally Posted by winaa

Personal thing mate.
I'm not a target shooter but I anneal for case life.
I understand metallurgy as I've worked in the trade for 30+ years so doing a bit of research flame annealing was a no brainer for me.
Buying a machine worth thousands didn't make economic sense.

Just rereading this thread. How true. My mate whom I reload for in the last few days has sent fotos of a chiller stacked with deer. His comment ...do you think I need all those fancy rifles,scopes and thermals.

All of us Amp owners:

To be honest the main reason I use one is that the brass seems to last forever. I've still got my original 20 federal for 45-70 and 'test' loaded them maybe 20 times now. Still no signs of giving up the ghost

Ref the mitre 10 gas torch - it's like everything that involves accuracy it's the process that defines the results more than the equipment you use. The flasher the gear the easier it is to get repeatable results and once you get repeatable results you can then make adjustments to your process to get the perfect result you need.

One of the hardest things with annealing cartridge cases is accurately measuring the temperature of the case to know if you are actually annealing it and what the result of your attempts actually are. I've done a bit of flame annealing and have the board and bits there to build one of the aliexpress annealers but it's an on-hold project while I have the buggered ribs and am limited for shooting ability. Not much call to anneal .22LR cases...

One of the first things I worked out is that my beautifully coloured cases that I flame 'annealed' and had that beautiful military Lapua-like annealing pattern on the case neck actually weren't much different than the uncooked cases. I needed to leave them in the flame for about another half a second or so to get the metallurgical changes in the cases. So close yet so far haha.