Run progressive dies on servos every day — currently 4 dies ranging from 8 to 22 stations. The transition from mechanical is smoother than you'd think, but there are a few gotchas nobody warns you about:
Feed timing is actually easier on servo, not harder. On our old 110T mechanical, the feed window was fixed by the cam angle — about 180 degrees at best. If the strip didn't settle before the die closed, tough luck. On the servo we program a 50ms dwell at TDC specifically for strip settling, then close at controlled speed. Our misfeed rate dropped from about 1 per 2000 strokes to basically zero.
The real issue is pilot pin engagement. On a mechanical press the slide comes down at a predictable velocity curve every single stroke. The pilots engage the strip at the same speed every time. On a servo with a custom motion profile, if you're running fast approach then slow for forming, the pilots hit the strip at high speed during the approach phase. We had pilot pin wear 3x faster than expected until we added a short decel segment right before pilot engagement height. Check your die timing chart and figure out exactly what slide position your pilots enter the strip — then make sure your motion profile is at reasonable speed at that point.
One more thing — if your die has in-die tapping or any secondary operations that depend on slide position (not time), make sure your cam switches or encoder signals are position-based. We had a tapping unit that was triggered by a timer from TDC on the old press. Moved to servo, the slide velocity profile was different, timer fired at the wrong slide position. Took us two broken taps to figure that one out. Everything should be position-triggered on a servo press.