Originally Posted by
Crusty
The major limitation is actually case length - the feed hopper has a notch in it for the case case neck to pass through on it's way to the heating position and it needs to be just long enough for the case to go through. I actually used the cutaway aluminum from the notch to make a ramp tab that pushes the case back towards the wall so that it will fall into correct position where the flame is aimed. The slot width in the rotor is pretty forgiving - as long as a case will fall into it below the rotor surface that's good enough. If you've got a small lathe it's relatively easy to make more rotors for really different case sizes and they go onto their driving shafts with a couple of set screws in the bottom of the troughs so they're easy to change. There's little torque required so the set screws don't need to be really cranked tight, which would mar an unhardened shaft.