I bought a Pro-1000 used and have since run over 40,000 through it...across 13 different chamberings. But I don't use it like most folks use it. For me, it's a brass prep machine. I use the Pro-1000 to size, prime and flare my brass.
I do this because I absolutely love to be able to see a tray of 50 pieces with powder charges in them before I place slugs over each cartridge. I also very much prefer to seat each bullet in my single stage press to get that tactile feedback that ensures the case mouth tension I demand.
Using the Pro-1000 has allowed me to greatly ramp up my rate of production and allows me to handle brass SO much less.
So I don't use the case feeder and I don't use any sort of a powder measuring or dispensing device on my Pro-1000. All my charges are metered from a Lyman 55 to awaiting cases in a load block.
Choosing the Pro-1000 allowed me the luxury of processing a LOT of brass in a very short time and it's also given me the low-cost flexibility in all the parts I need to work with 13 distinctly different chamberings all on the same machine. Not including the loading dies that I already had... I've
literally got less money in my entire Pro-1000 setup (for all those calibers) than the expenditure it would require simply to add a case feeder or bullet feeder to a Dillon progressive.
20k a year is no feat for anyone running a progressive machine. And I've worked with a Dillon -- they are incredible tools. But if you attempted to outfit a Dillon 650 for the same 13 different handgun rounds that I load, I think you'd burn up the display on your calculator by the time you reached the bottom line.
