nater Posted October 24, 2012 Posted October 24, 2012 I ordered a 1/2" cavity pump and a spollette rammer from californiapyro. Everything arrived quick and nicely packaged. I pressed a spollette using FFFg, which is a little more coarse than I would prefer. There isn't much to say about a rammer. It fits nice and snug in my 1/4" New England tubes and it consolidates the comp when pressed. It is marked, but it will take some experimentation with my powder and a scoop size to get perfect 1 ID increments for tight timing. I also pressed some BP mill dust and FFFg with the cavity pump. This was a quick test using dry comp with no binders, so not completely accurate. As you can see, it is hard to crush the commercial grains into one consolidated mass. There is a machined edge on the bottom of the pump's sleeve. I had a little trouble getting the first star out of the pump. For the second one, I flipped the sleeve around and used the gap in the arbor of my press so I could press the star out. I'll probably use some washers or a section of PVC pipe to make an extraction sleeve. All in all, I am happy with his tooling, prices, and service. Keep it up.
californiapyro Posted October 25, 2012 Posted October 25, 2012 Thank you for the review Nater I am curious whether your problem extracting the star has to do with the composition used or the pump itself, please let me know if this problem persists when you pump something wet
nater Posted October 26, 2012 Author Posted October 26, 2012 I might be able to pump a batch of stars this weekend as a proper test. We'll see how the weather ends up.
nater Posted October 28, 2012 Author Posted October 28, 2012 Update: Good news: As I thought, with properly dampened comp, there were no issues pumping the comet out of the sleeve. Bad news: It is a pain getting consistently sized stars without a pin so each star can be shaved to the same length. My only suggestion would be to drill a hole in the pump, so a pin can be inserted as a stop.
californiapyro Posted October 28, 2012 Posted October 28, 2012 (edited) Nater, I am working on adding to the website a depth pin option, it's not up yet. Some report an o-ring at the depth line works well for sizing. If you send me the pump I can add the depth hole with pin for you -Hunter Edited October 28, 2012 by californiapyro
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