Cracked Aligment sleeve

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I was chugging along pumping out 45acp when the seating die came apart and stayed on top of the round. Some how the seating stem and alignment sleeve came out past that little snap ring.

Looking at it closely I realised it was really filthy so I took it all apart to clean it. Cleaning it revealed 3 cracks at the mouth of the alignment sleeve and that the mouth of it was starting too flare.

I tapped the flared part with a gunsmith hammer so I could put it all back together and I'm going to call Hornady tommorow after I take all my other seating dies apart and inspect them.

I've had the snap ring break before but have I never seen a badly cracked alignment sleeve before this.

Is this a common problem?
 
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Hornady told me that this was a common problem with their older dies.

He was a little surprised when I told Him that the dies were less than 3 years old.
 
They will definately do the right thing. They don't get as many calls as the other big company so it makes them feel good to go into code red for little things. I have nothing but great things to say about them.
 
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