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The below is my recent personal experience with Hornady equipment and customer service since this is something that gets kickedaround in discussions frequently.
I bought a new LNL a while back and have played with it loading 45 acp and 38 special rounds quite successfully. It's a sweet machine and I have been very pleased with its performance. I never really considered adding a case feeder to the set up until I ran into a local guy at a gun show who was liquidating his LNL setup complete with both the bullet and case feeder. One thing lead to another and I bought both the bullet and case feeder setups from him. I decided to shift gears and load some 40 S&W at about the same time. Being somewhat methodical in my approach, I decided to add just the case feeder at this point, get the kinks soothed out, and deal with the bullet feeder later. I did a YT search and found a number of videos showing guys using the case feeder with 40 S&W and many if not most cussing it soundly. I thought "uh-oh, here comes the end of the Hornady honeymoon"
So I bolted up the case feeder and once I figured out all the little parts and pieces, I tried just manually dropping cases down the small case feed to be I had installed between the hopper and the pivot mechanism. The first few cases made it through the tube and then one would stick in the tube halfway down... So even though the manual indicated the 40 S&W should use the small tube, I decided to try using the large tube. I switched the feed tube and drop to be to the case plate to the large tubes, and ta-dah, no more cases stuck part way down. Now the problem was the cases would frequently fall over on the shell plate before they got pushed to the shell plate holder. Another YT search showed guys working around the issue by taping a notched business card to the shell plate drop tube to give extra support to the cases during the drop function. I thought that a bit cheesy, and decided, "hey this wasn't a problem with the small tube... what if I use the large case feed tube from the hopper and the small tube to the shell plate?" A few minutes later I was cranking cases through 99% of the time without issue, but there were still enough problems to be bothersome. I decided to try out the Hornady customer service number and see what happens.
The guy on the other end listened to my story and I asked him what the recommended setup is for 40S&W since what I was doing was working but not perfectly.Ni told him about the business card solution on YouTube and what I had done. After I finished he said " yeah, we found out that 40 s&w is kind of an awkward sized case and although we don't ship it with the casefeeder, we have developed a special medium size feed and drop tube setup specific to the 40 s&w cases. What's your address and I will send you both free of charge"
I am currently awaiting arrival of said equipment to see how that works out. I guess on the negative side, Hornady doesn't send the medium sized setup as part of the equipment from the get go... I am not sure why not... Maybe not that many people load 40 s&w? On the plus side, they sent it free to me with a phone call... my guess is that many people never call and don't know there is a solution available from Hornady, hence the frustration and kludge solution youtube videos. Just thought I'd post it here in case anyone else is in the same boat.
I bought a new LNL a while back and have played with it loading 45 acp and 38 special rounds quite successfully. It's a sweet machine and I have been very pleased with its performance. I never really considered adding a case feeder to the set up until I ran into a local guy at a gun show who was liquidating his LNL setup complete with both the bullet and case feeder. One thing lead to another and I bought both the bullet and case feeder setups from him. I decided to shift gears and load some 40 S&W at about the same time. Being somewhat methodical in my approach, I decided to add just the case feeder at this point, get the kinks soothed out, and deal with the bullet feeder later. I did a YT search and found a number of videos showing guys using the case feeder with 40 S&W and many if not most cussing it soundly. I thought "uh-oh, here comes the end of the Hornady honeymoon"
So I bolted up the case feeder and once I figured out all the little parts and pieces, I tried just manually dropping cases down the small case feed to be I had installed between the hopper and the pivot mechanism. The first few cases made it through the tube and then one would stick in the tube halfway down... So even though the manual indicated the 40 S&W should use the small tube, I decided to try using the large tube. I switched the feed tube and drop to be to the case plate to the large tubes, and ta-dah, no more cases stuck part way down. Now the problem was the cases would frequently fall over on the shell plate before they got pushed to the shell plate holder. Another YT search showed guys working around the issue by taping a notched business card to the shell plate drop tube to give extra support to the cases during the drop function. I thought that a bit cheesy, and decided, "hey this wasn't a problem with the small tube... what if I use the large case feed tube from the hopper and the small tube to the shell plate?" A few minutes later I was cranking cases through 99% of the time without issue, but there were still enough problems to be bothersome. I decided to try out the Hornady customer service number and see what happens.
The guy on the other end listened to my story and I asked him what the recommended setup is for 40S&W since what I was doing was working but not perfectly.Ni told him about the business card solution on YouTube and what I had done. After I finished he said " yeah, we found out that 40 s&w is kind of an awkward sized case and although we don't ship it with the casefeeder, we have developed a special medium size feed and drop tube setup specific to the 40 s&w cases. What's your address and I will send you both free of charge"
I am currently awaiting arrival of said equipment to see how that works out. I guess on the negative side, Hornady doesn't send the medium sized setup as part of the equipment from the get go... I am not sure why not... Maybe not that many people load 40 s&w? On the plus side, they sent it free to me with a phone call... my guess is that many people never call and don't know there is a solution available from Hornady, hence the frustration and kludge solution youtube videos. Just thought I'd post it here in case anyone else is in the same boat.
