So many things to address:
KOTA 1342, A Tow Pogue eh
<grrrrrr grumble grumble, called themselves grunts but didn't hump. 0352 mean anything?>
I was talking brass casings vice steel and aluminium cassings, and I have seen many 20mm and larger steel casings, as for larger gun cassings, seen alot that are steel or aluminuim. The brass casing can be reloaded, the steel and aluminum had the 1 shot life.
1st, brass can be resized multiple times, as a rule I generaly use mine <well when I did reload, haven't in a couple years, have a Dillion RL 500, Lee Single Stage X2, RCBS progressive and single stage, Had a Lee progressive too but sent it back> Necked rounds, the main problem I have had with them is that the neck colapses into the cartridge body. Makes sense since that is the area that has the most stress in reloading. I supose they could be cut down into something else, otherwise they are just so much brass for the recycle bin.
Brass is also easier to recycle requiring less energy to reprocess.
Now, steel and aluminumum cassings,
Aluminuim is a soft metal with a low heat point, the heat and pressure within a firing chamber, especialy a large caliber gun would make the casing weak for sure. I am sure the metal is soft enough and slick enough to work in a die for resizing, but would it survive the resizing without creasing? And would you end up with a case rupture?
Steel Cases:
Usualy made from soft metal, but again the heat and pressure inside the chamber when fired acts as a tempering or hardening process. There is a reason alot of shooting ranges that make and sell their own overly expensive reloads BAN STEEL CASED AMMO. <the fuggers sweep up the cases you fire and leave and reload and sell them for their normaly overly inflated prices> The steel is harder and will no longer expand to give you that gas tight seal in the chamber.
Further, to send the now hardened steel case through your die is going to destroy your die. The case will get stuck if you are lucky and it is a pain to remove it.
As for the whole guy with a sledge hammer reloading a 90mm gun round. With a solid slug of lead it is possible, also with a reduced charge round.
I can see in a T2K world, they making shaped charged anti tank rounds, standard HE anti personel rounds and like I said a flachette or buckshot type round for anti personel purposes.
Making the rounds would be done in a small factory with a set up like you said, a press like that, comonly available from somewhere like Harbor Freight Tools to resize and seat the projectile. Of course the seating especialy when using a HE or Shaped charged HEAT round would not be done with a sledge hammer, AH! that just is to much
However, if the materials are available, then I can see several dozen being turned out a day.
As for using steel casings in normal dies, yes and it is BAD BAD BAD! It can at the luckiest get stuck, at the worste ruin your dies.
KALOS:
Yes, you can use almost anything for a projectile. Lead is the norm because it is cheap and it has known characteristics in flight. But, alot of rounds are steel, basicaly anything 20mm and over are steel, at least I have encountered rounds in the 20mm and larger that were steel. But keep in mind many of those rounds were also explosive.
Some rounds in the past were tungsten used for anti armor, and even some small arms rounds are made with a steel core with a light coat of lead and a copper jacket.
They have rounds made from zinc and even ceramic rounds today. And in WWII the Japanese even used bullets made from wood.
Lead is the norm because it is cheap and easily cast. To use steel you need to have higher temps to melt it, and you need to finish it and mill it down. Further it is harder so you will have to put a coating otherwise it can cause more jams inside the barrel. Imagine a steel bullet, firing, it gets hot and metal expands when it heats, so it gets jammed mid barrel, you are firing full or rapid semi auto, so you fire two more rounds into the barrel with a round stuck in it. Can you imagine what would happen next?
Also, bullets made from harder materials would cause excessive barrel wear as well.
Wooden bullets have a short range of just a couple hundred meters before they burn up or loose velocity and drift off left or right and then just wildly. And of course poor penttration other than on soft targets.
Ceramics are used for indoor use on senstive targets and mainly on soft targets, they will penetrate soft targets ie, a person not using body armor. But when they hit a rigid target they explode into dust.
I personaly would use steel core ammo with either a hard well lubed lead coat, or even a copper coat <raid the telephone lines and other electrical equipment to give a jacket for your bullets to protect your bullets and give them better more traditional ballistics.
Now, as I see it, to make shells:
Mortars you can cast or mill the rounds or a combination of both. Cast them with finish them with some mill work. Fill them with explosive and then screw on a fuse. Then, add your propelant charges which is done in the field.
The same can be done with artillery rounds. Just on a larger scale. And there you have a early version of a HE round.
The fuse is the bigger design challenge. A mortar the tail fin can be semi complicated to build since it is one more step over a regular shell.
Anti Tank rounds:
Since these are high velocity rounds. I would do the following,
Cast, then mill them down.
Put them on a spindle or centrifuge even a car tire balancer and put it for a spin to see if it is balanced right. If it isn't you will have an irradict round which is dangerous.
Measure it with calipers for the proper tolerances for that round.
Fill it with the explosive olike a shaped charge,
Make and install your fuse assembly.
As for making the rounds:
You would need to set up an industry or factory to make or preform several of the processes at the same time so you have a steady flow of the items. Or at the very leastr have a stockpile of parts rather than custom make each part.
Fuse assemblies can be made and hopefully universal for the newly made rounds fitting several calibers and types of rounds. And of course you will need some folks in a shop making the components for the fuses as well as some folks putting them together into a complete assembly. I figure half a dozen people.
Casing, however many people needed to forge the casing, this I can see being contracted out with a factory who smelts iron.
A couple people running a milling machine and one person putting it on the balance.
A group who brews the explosive at another building a distance from the rest of the factory for safety purposes. They can easily produce more explosive than is immediatly needed so this would be operated monthly or bi monthly. And surpluses can be use for other products like claymores and handgrenades which can be made from cheaply cast pot metal.
Then one group pours the explosive in the shell and then the rest is assembled.
As I said you can have the entire staff of say two dozen people working on 1 aspect at a time when they build a large enough supply of components they stop and begin working on the other aspect, and so on and so on.
The manufacture of explosive rounds is more complex than standad rifle and pistol bullets as they have more components. I mean one can make molds for pistol or rifle bullets easily enough, to the poind you can mold 50 at a time. 50 holes, fill them with molten let, let harden a couple minutes. Do it again. Figure 5 minutes to pour and harden, inside an hour you have made 600 projectiles <thats 20 30 round magazines> And if you have more than 1 mold per person or more people doing this, well heck, 5 molds per person seems doable, times however many people you have at the task. You can make a large number of projectiles in a very short time.
Gun powder, I can not see a person making less than a keg at a time, it is to much work.
Brass, reform it, with a progressive press or even a single stage you can resize 1 case every three seconds, and with an automatice press its faster.
And then give half a dozen workers a progressive press where once the press cycles you are producing 1 complete round with each pull of the lever, or if its a automatic press, figure 1 round a second as long as you keep the components of powder, primers, projectiles and casings fed. Figure 5 people with a press and you can turn out a few hundred round an hour, I forget what Dillon advertising the output of some of their presses. But the components are easily made and easily assembled when compared to explosive rounds.
I am guessing with the components for say a mortar already, between inspection and assembly it would take lets see,
1 or 2 minutes to put the casing in balancer and test it.
2 minutes to measure it
1 minute to mount the round in a stand
2 minutes to fill body with liquid explosive that hardens or gels
10 to 30 minutes for explosive to solidify.
1 minute to screw on top piece of shell.
1 minute for final inspection
And then figure a couple minutes to move shells from each stage of assembly to the next.
Fuses are added in the field prior to firing
As for making the components, that is another storey entirely.