I just loaded about 150 rounds of .308 on this and thought I'd give a quick review. I only stopped because I switched lots of powder and want to shoot some to make sure everything is consistent before I load the rest.
I picked up the Omega Auto Trickler on a whim after selling some old books for Amazon credit. Previously, I was using the Gem Pro and hand trickling with a Hornady trickler. To get the trickler to the right height, I had to set it on a box of SMKs and I accidentally dumped the thing more than once spilling powder all over.
There's a ton of reviews on the Gem Pro and mine has been OK. It went totally screwy once and I just recalibrated it. Usually when I am running it is stable +/- .02 gr, and usually perfectly stable. It does drift from time to time, and I just retare it and ends up stable right where it started. The scale is sensitive, and the desk it is sitting on is not level, and I've noticed a lot of the drift I see comes when I bump it a bit and it shifts. The pad it comes on also is soft, so there will be dimples where the feet are. I usually take it off the pad when I'm not using it, so it is flat and consistent each time I set it up. I picked up a set of calibration weights on ebay for $10 and if they aren't true, they are at least consistent, and I do not use one of the ferrite cores to clean up the power voltage. The only thing I do is record what weight the powder tray zeros to and record this in my loading notebook, and it has not shifted by more than +/- .02 gr despite power on/power off, unplugging, moving, turning upside down and shaking to clean out kernels, etc. At the end of the day, I'm very happy with this purchase, and I haven't done the math but I'm betting it's more precise than my balance scale.
The Omega is nice. The actual trickler body sits on a post mounted in a canted base. You can rotate the trickler to get it to speed up or slow down the powder flow as a coarse adjustment, then there is a sliding weight for a fine adjustment. The most frustrating thing about it is getting it set up right, then charging the powder tube. If you go too fast, the kernels bunch up and you don't get 1 at a time, and you can't see the kernels coming until they are at the end. Getting it tuned to where the kernels flow without being able to see them at the end is the hardest part, which isn't all that hard at all.
With this setup, I can charge cases to +/- .02 grains much faster than before. With the hand trickling setup, I'd sigh when I realized I had to charge 50 cases to fill the loading tray, and with this I had 50 charged and seated, then another 50 charged before I realized I was doing some semblance of work.
I know there's other products out there, but for the price, I am very happy with this setup.
