CS7 - A new take on sorting brass cases by headstamp 

My case sorter is now built and running. I started as a complete newbie a month ago. This group of videos induced me to buy a 3d printer (Prusa), buy all the listed parts, buy a couple of books and watch videos on Arduino builds and programing, and start the project. I did have several difficult challenges and issues, but they were mostly of my own making. This is a great design ending with a great result. At full speed it sorts at 74 pieces per minute. Accuracy is about 85-90 percent so far, but improving with machine training including periodic cleanup of saved training images that are subpar. Prints were all with PLA.

After watching some of your sorter videos i already have some design upgrades that could benefit this design greatly, i need to get my 3D printers up and running again to make these changes as well as making the fully 3D printed case feeder, after sorting thousands of brass by headstamp by hand this would have been a massive time saver. Can’t wait to show it off.

One of the coolest reloading inventions I've seen, cheers for sharing.

Man, this is an amazing project. I was captivated by DIY case/bullet feeders, but this thing is a whole new level

Can’t wait to see where this goes. You could print a divider that sits above existing bins so it doesn’t take 8 hours each for 8 or 9 bins.

I´ve toyed with the idéa of starting this project on my own, but now that i found your channel I'm definitely trying yours before attempting something on my own. :-) Big thanks and I'll get back to you when I'm further along. :-) Greetings from Sweden.

This is really nice. I'm wondering if we could eliminate the internal part change if we had an intake gate. This way we could allow shells into the taller rotating case moving part, one at a time, as needed. Thank you for sharing your project.

I finally got a 3d printer. I have downloaded a bunch of files for this. Time to start printing in conjunction with 3 other projects.

Genius! I had a similar idea on how to make this. Very impressive man.

Will try do build your solution over the Fall/Winter Time 2024 here in Austria and will present my results and the way to get there on the Austria Shooting Channel here on RU-vid if OK for you. It's so amazing what you provide here for all of us competitive shooters !!!!! Great!

I have everything working and there is one issue that Im wondering if you have experienced as well. Every once and a while a 9mm case will fall "tilted" and doesn't drop straight into the cartridge spool. When this happens, the sorter jams and will grind on the gears. The only way I can resolve this issue is to power off the motor controllers, correct the tilted case and move on. I have tried adding o-rings to the drop tube to keep it from moving and even adjusted my homing offset to get the drop hole perfectly underneath the tube. No matter what I do I have maybe one out of 100 cases that will do this. Not a huge deal but definitely requires me to sit and stare at the machine when I run it through a sorting cycle. Have you ran across this? Would it be possible to have the stepper motor back up by 1 or 2 steps right before it rotates clockwise? This "jolt" should correct the tilted case. Another suggestion is to have the machine stop the sorting process after X amount of seconds not getting a focused case picture (similar to the stop function after getting several "blank" pictures) . Hope this makes sense. Thanks!

Just keeps getting better and better. I do wonder how long the 3d printed gears will last. Any reason that you could not drive the brass wheel directly?

A thought for the bins with the long print time, make the bin a solid object and print it in vase mode with like a 1.2mm line width.

I need this adapted for sorting rimfire for swaging!

What are the support pole sizes, either in or mm? Thanks. I do not have a Dillon case feeder so I'm making my own. just wondering about the diameter.

Very nice! I wish I had a printer!

Such great ingenuity! Thank you for all your hard work and dedication for this! Is it possible to detect crimped primers and kick them in a separate bucket for swaging? I fired up the printer and started the first print tonight, along with ordered the parts list off amazon!

do 380 brass jam the disk?

Love the CS7 design, Can you add the ability to sort 308 and an IndexWheel ? Would love to separate military from commercial brass.

you need to design something that can sort by caliber and then use this to sort by headstamp would be fantastic

been following and Im in the process of assembling the parts. Finally a project that will force me to get a 3D printer. 😁. My one question is about the windows software. can it be trained to recognize the difference between small and large primers? i.e 45 ACP SP/LP or 10mm SP/LP

This is awesome!!!

Great idea and it looks really well implemented. Parts have already been ordered and the printing begins. I would have small ideas for improvement, also with regard to the reflections. How can you best contact you?

Great work! Well Done!

That is awesome

The camera seems to be unobtanium in Canada. Any issues replacing it with a higher resolution camera as long as the FOV is the same?

Wow... now if you could design a weight sorter, I think you would have people lining up to make orders. I am sure it can be done since there is already powder auto ticklers that read the scale such as FX-120i and all you need is a delivery mechanism that would drop, grab it back and deposit in the designated by X,Y bin - bingo!

Can the software be modified to detect berdan primers by the primer diameter?

This looks like a project I’d be interested in funding for production. Care to reach out?

looks great

What is the name of the microswitch, it feels like 1837636 different and which pins is it connected to?

Howdy mate, Thought you probably want to know, the links to the amazing version above above does not work (second and third links) Still absolutely amazed at the fantastic prototypes you put together, totally mindblowing!!! :))

Might you ever sell a ready to assemble kit?

I'm assuming you printed the case wheel with supports?

Hey I’d love to talk to you about this project. I am in the market for a commercial application to sort .45 by primer size

Is there a folder of all the STLs

Great👍👍👍👍👍❤

DAMMMM!!!!!

Thanks for sharing this, it's been a fun project. I had been working on one a while back with openMV Cam that looked like the rotary dial version you moved on from. I got a bit stuck trying to figure out how to position the brass over the camera without using a piece of glass. Had though about using a microscope slide, but never implemented. Your version seems to have potentially solved that problem. I do have a few questions , wondering if anyone has experienced an issue where the brass seems to slip down a bit over the camera and get stuck on the edge of the base during the shell plate advance? I think I'll try to chamfer the hole used for viewing on the edge it advances towards, but before I do, wanted to check and see if others had solved in a different way? Also, if anyone is having problems getting the camera to focus, I had to manually adjust and move the lens out. This allowed it to focus on closer items. One additional thing, if the spots where the spring connected to the tenson cam and the classifier base had a hook I think it would be a quick improvement.

Smart people are so amazing. id love to have a 3D printer. Really need some K31 stripper clips. Found a file to make them. Just cant do it myself.

Nevermind. I see how the different versions are nested now on the github. Duh.

This is so awesome