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I have no experience with the Hornady machine, I'm sure a lot of people who have them love them, but I have a Dillon 550.
I started on a RCBS single stage and after I figuratively cut my teeth on that, moved to the Dillon 550 - not a day goes by that I don't love the 550, for my needs, it is perfect. You can reload just about any caliber on it and switching between them is SUPER easy if you get a few extra tool heads set up with their extra powder measures. Once you get more into it ultimately you will likely want a tool head set up for each caliber you shoot and then it's about a 5 minute or less operation to switch completely between calibers and start loading again. What a lot of Dillon people do is actually own two 550's and leave one set up for large primers and one set up for small primers, but really that is just a matter of convenience, 1 550 is already an ammo plant by itself.
Of course there are set ups that auto index, that's neat, but the manual index works better for my needs. Using a progressive press is what makes reloading not so time sucking. I did about 100 9mm this morning in under 30 minutes and I was not moving very fast.
I started on a RCBS single stage and after I figuratively cut my teeth on that, moved to the Dillon 550 - not a day goes by that I don't love the 550, for my needs, it is perfect. You can reload just about any caliber on it and switching between them is SUPER easy if you get a few extra tool heads set up with their extra powder measures. Once you get more into it ultimately you will likely want a tool head set up for each caliber you shoot and then it's about a 5 minute or less operation to switch completely between calibers and start loading again. What a lot of Dillon people do is actually own two 550's and leave one set up for large primers and one set up for small primers, but really that is just a matter of convenience, 1 550 is already an ammo plant by itself.
Of course there are set ups that auto index, that's neat, but the manual index works better for my needs. Using a progressive press is what makes reloading not so time sucking. I did about 100 9mm this morning in under 30 minutes and I was not moving very fast.