Guide

Powder Checks for Dillon Presses: What Fits a 550, 750, and 1100 — and What a Laser Adds

Most of what we write is for Mark 7 Autodrive owners, because that's where a sensor can stop the press by itself. But the largest group of progressive loaders in the country runs blue: a Dillon 550, a 750, or an 1100, cranked by hand. Their powder-check question is different, and the answers on the forums are ten years old. So here is the current version, straight — including the honest part about what a laser can and can't do on a press with no controller to stop.

First, the station math

Every powder check on the market, ours included, needs a die station between the powder drop and the bullet seat. That single fact decides most of this guide before any product does.

RL550: four stations — size/deprime, powder and expand, seat, crimp. There is no free station, which is why Dillon doesn't offer a powder check for it. Your options are a combined seat/crimp die to free station 4, or a check that lives outside the press: weigh a sample, look in every case, or use a case-mouth light. Most 550 owners simply look, and at 550 speeds with manual indexing that is a defensible answer.
XL650 / XL750: five stations, and station 3 exists for exactly this — size, powder, check, seat, crimp. The trouble starts when a bullet feeder arrives. The feeder die needs a station, so the common compromise is a combined seat/crimp die at station 5 and the feeder at 4, keeping the check at 3. If you'd rather keep a separate crimp die, the check is the one that gets dropped, and that's the trade this whole guide is about.
Super 1050 / RL1100: eight stations, and the layout has room for everything: swage, prime, powder, check, bullet feed, seat, crimp, with a station to spare. If you have an 1100, the only question is which check to put there.

Dillon Powder Check (~$99): an alarm, not a stop

Dillon's own system fits the 650, 750, 1050, and 1100 (not the 550) and is the natural first choice: it's well made, it drops into a Dillon toolhead, and it's cheap. A brass-tipped rod rides down onto the powder column as the ram comes up; if the rod ends up too high or too low, a buzzer sounds. That's the whole device, and it's worth being precise about what it does: it beeps. It does not stop the press. Hand-cranking, that's usually fine — you hear it, you stop, you pull the case. The practical annoyances are the ones owners report for years on end: a buzzer that's hard to hear over a case feeder, powder clinging to the rod on fine flake powders, re-zeroing during long sessions, and a rod that has to be matched to the charge, so switching between a small pistol charge and a big one means adjusting it.

RCBS Lock-Out Die (~$60–90): the one that physically stops a hand press

On a hand-cranked press this is the mechanical option worth a serious look, because it does something the Dillon alarm can't: if the charge is meaningfully high or low, it locks the press mid-stroke. You can't finish the round. It fits any standard 7/8"-14 station, so it goes in station 3 of a 750 like anything else. The limits are the same ones we describe in the full comparison: straight-wall pistol cases only, a setup procedure with its own folklore, and a probe that touches the powder, which is where the fussiness with small, dense charges comes from.

What a stand-alone laser adds on a Dillon

The Laser Powder Check Pro V3 comes in a Stand Alone Manual Press version ($579.99) that threads into any 7/8"-14 station the same way the Dillon check does — station 3 on a 750, station 5 on an 1100. Nothing touches the case or the powder: a laser measures the height of the powder column on every stroke and compares it to the window you set with a known-good case and a known-light one. That removes the entire family of probe problems at once — no rod to clean, no swap between charges, no disturbed powder, and no rifle-versus-pistol restriction, since the laser doesn't care about case shape. It also catches smaller errors than a rod can, which matters most on small charges of fast pistol powder where a couple of tenths of a grain is the difference between a good round and a squib.

Now the honest part. A Dillon has no controller for a sensor to talk to, so the stand-alone laser does not stop the press. It reads on its display and, with the buzzer option, sounds off — the same alert model as the Dillon check, with a far better measurement behind it. If you want a machine that physically refuses to make a bad round, on a hand press that's still the Lock-Out Die, pistol calibers only. If you want to actually know your charge on every stroke, on any cartridge, and log it, that's the laser. The stand-alone dashboard adds the logging: every round timestamped, rejects counted, CSV export — the same data trail our Mark 7 customers use, on a hand-cranked press.

Side by side on a Dillon

	Dillon Powder Check	RCBS Lock-Out Die	RCM Laser (stand-alone)
Fits	650/750, 1050/1100	Any 7/8"-14 station	Any 7/8"-14 station
Cartridges	Pistol and rifle	Straight-wall pistol only	Pistol and rifle
Senses by	Rod contacts the powder	Rod contacts the powder	Laser, no contact
On a bad charge	Buzzer	Locks the press mid-stroke	Display reading + optional buzzer
Small-charge sensitivity	Limited	Limited	Tenths of a grain
Change between loads	Adjust the rod	Re-adjust the die	Re-teach with two cases
Logging	—	—	With the dashboard
Price	~$99	~$60–90	$579.99

Our recommendation by press

550: keep looking in the cases, and consider a seat/crimp die if you truly want a check station. 750, hand-cranked, pistol only, modest volume: the Lock-Out Die is the best value on this page, because it stops the press. 750 or 1100 loading rifle, running a case feeder you can't hear the buzzer over, loading small charges of fast powder, or loading for other people: the laser, with the dashboard if you need the paper trail. And if you're eyeing an Autodrive for that 1100 someday, the Mark 7 version of the same sensor stops the press automatically, so the money isn't stranded.

One more thing, since it's the question we're asked most by Dillon owners: we're working on a powder check that reads the case between stations, so it doesn't consume one. It isn't a product yet and we won't pretend it is. If you want to know when it is, join the newsletter or ask us about your press — we'll tell you honestly whether the $80 die is all you need.

Keep reading

Browse RCM sensors →