I have a Rockchucker, Dillon 550 and 1100 automated. (Mark 7) Rockchucker used to size and deprime large caliber such as 458 socom, 50 Beowulf and 45/70. 550 to load these three as well as the 1100 does not have a shell plate for these, Dillon tells me that the reason is the rebated rims on the 450 and 50 Beowulf won't work with the brass feeder, seems like not enough people load these if you ask me.
The automated 1100 has a sensor on nearly every stage. Unfortunately, there are not enough stations to seat and crimp the bullet separately if you use the powder sensor. But being automated, I would never load without that sensor.
It took a very steep learning curve to go from the 550 to the 1100. Just when you think all the sensors are working and the process has been worked out, another issue comes up. I will say that after a while the issues have been smaller and less frequent and almost nonexistent. I learned that processing brass in a separate pass makes things go much smoother and most of the issues come up in sizing and depriming, this way you avoid spillage and non-primed cases. This also allows me to run the cases per hour much higher when processing brass as well as loading it, therefore not a big time difference, in addition to it being automated so no physical effort on my part, saving my shoulder for large caliber.
Conversion sets are very expensive. But... When I set up a caliber to load, I will load 15,000 - 20,000 of one caliber, then set up for the next, as such, I only need to load each caliber every 1-2 years.
Maybe once I retire, I will shoot more and then buy a toolhead for each caliber, but the sensors cost a small fortune as well, so would still reuse the only set for each caliber, thus making the need for separate toolheads less important.
I have two toolheads, one for processing which takes 5 minutes to set up and one for loading. The loading toolhead takes a good while to set up and tweak each time.
BTW, I have never had a squib on either system and have loaded some 80k-90k on my 550 over the years. I have had missed primers, but you know pretty quick when powder spills into the output bin.
Even with the powder check on the 1100, I visually look into the shell casing to ensure roughly the same amount has dropped into each case. for 223, I installed a camera to look down into the case, but it does take my eyes off the machine a bit and I like to see the bullet seat to make sure it is reasonably upright.
All three are great machines, but I process and ALOT more, and faster on the 1100 with 0 physical effort, I can save my shoulder for bowling.
