I have a high opinion of Bryan Litz. His research work and publications have moved the science and the sport forward.
In the interest of fairness: My concern with his AMP experiment is that he cleaned the barrel at the start of each test (clean the barrel, shoot a small nr of fouling rounds, then shoot annealed brass, clean again, shoot fouling rounds, shoot non-annealed brass). Some of my rifles take 20 rounds to copper foul and achieve their typical / normal speed, while others take 5. I am not convinced he fired enough fouling rounds to have representatives speed results. Minor complaint really, and he might well get the same result if he repeats the experiment with 20 fouling rounds and increase the round count by 3x. But worth redoing i think, just to be sure.
My opinion of the AMP machine is still the same: It is a useful productivity tool, but it is over priced. My partial results show that it will not generate an ES or group size reduction on par with say upgrading from a factory barrel to a Bartlein, or upgrading from random range pickup to premium brass and premium bullets.
I have used the AMP machine to anneal several hundred pieces of brass dozens of times, and i like the speed and convenience of the machine. I am also pretty sure it is a more consistent and accurate way to anneal brass. Shoulder bump is more consistent (but different compared to flame annealing, so adjust your dies). It is so quick that it is no burden at all to anneal every time. I intend to keep it. If it has improved my SDs, then it is too small a change to notice, as my logbook does not reflect it.
Subjectively, seating force appears to be more consistent than before (once i learned to clean out the necks post annealing), which must help at least a little bit.
I have recently improved my personal best and shot a series of sequential zero (<0.1”) and one (<0.2”) groups at 100 using Atips and 147 ELDMs, 7 groups in a row, all three shot groups, with two different rifles, on two different days. So maybe the AMP annealer is making a contribution to group size, but it is hard to be sure. Too early to tell.
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