I had gone back and forth talking about benders and notchers for a while. I really wasn’t overly impressed for quite some time, since the “other” brands did much of the same thing and were easily available used. Then, I went on a road trip out to Minnesota to visit family for the 4th of July. I decided to stop by Baileigh on the way home and check out their stuff. All I have to say is HOLY COW am I happy I did that.
Here’s a little run down of our experience. As soon as I stepped into the customer waiting area, I knew I was at a great place. Everything is very neat and organized. … we walked out into the warehouse to drool, and boy did I drool. Everything in that place was of the absolute best quality. I’m the kind of person who likes to see stuff before he buys, and I’m very glad I did.
We were stuck with a strict budget, and Baileigh worked with us to get only what we needed and nothing more…very friendly and never pushed the sale.. Anyway, on to the equipment.
We tested out this guy, RDB-250 tube bender. As soon as he hit the go pedal and bent a perfect 90* in some 1.25″ pipe in about 5 seconds, I was sold. The accuracy was something I was far from used to as well. This should be a great asset to our business. Combined with Bend Tech the possibilities are endless. I’ll be upgrading to a rotary positioning table down the line to increase accuracy.
We also looked at the TN-400 tubing notcher. The quality of this machine is also very apparent. I’m a huge fan of dirty, powerful tools, and this thing fits that bill perfectly.
We ended up walking out of Baileigh about 3 hours later more than happy with our decisions. Shipping cost was very reasonable and the crew there is second to none. Fast forward to last week (a week after our visit). The machines arrived on the truck. Last night I finally got around to opening the packaging. First of all, I’ve never seen so much care put into shipping in my life. I think these machines could have fallen off the truck and still worked perfectly fine. It took two of us about 20 minutes to remove the bubble wrap on both packages.