Texasdave,
While you can use dies other than Dillons in their presses (aside from the Square Deal, anyway) you won't want to. Dillon's are very well designed for use in a progressive press and are ideally suited to this sort of operation. The ability to pull the seater plug without removing the die from the press is well worthwhile when you get some lube built up inside, which is inevitable when loading large amounts of lead bullets. Their dies also feature a very generous flair on the mouth, which is important for this type of press.
As far as the lube goes, yeah, go with the carbide dies by all means. I still use some lube, however. With my 1050, I'll use just a very small touch of Imperial on my fingers, which I then run through the brass while loading the hopper. There's so little lube on the cases that you can't even detect it by looking or feeling, but it makes a tremendous diffrence in how smoothly the press operates. Not necessary, but makes things go so much easier.
