BAILEIGH Industrial TN-250 tube notcher w/ radial vise (review inside)

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I'm still in a little bit of a shock that I actually won this thing from the contest on OFN. I had a little bit of a delay in the shipping thanks to some inclement weather between WI and FL which drove me crazy waiting on it to show up, hahaha. But it finally did Friday!For those of you not familiar with the TN-250, checkout this link: http://www.bii1.com/notchers/tube-notcher-tn250.phpBefore I even entered the contest I had been looking at the TN-250 on Baileigh's website for months wishing I had one. The radial vise on it lets you do notches in bends, and the shaft swings to both sides of the tubing so if you have a cluster of tubes coming together, you can notch that our for perfect fit as well. Extremely versatile tool.I had read the specs and the dimensions of the TN-250 before of course, but I was pretty stunned by the size of the box!I opened it up and was greeted firstly by a SWEEEEEEEET Baileigh Industrial banner (that I can hang up inside the shop, and the steel sign I made will get hung up outside after I go back and re-do it) and tons of stickers and decals for the toolbox, truck, and whatever random high traffic locations I can find. So once I got the stickers and banner out of the box, I seen a the handle for the radial vise adjustment (Its quite large, probably 6-8inches in diameter and it really does allow you to crank down on the clamp with the extra leverage from the size of it) and also a small little ziplock of hardware to assemble it. The handle has a nice crinkle-black finish on it. I think its powdercoat, I've seen similar finishes called "stealth black". Very wear resistant stuff.The TN-250 itself was packaged in Insta-pack. I'm not sure how many of you guys are familiar with this stuff, I've gotten it in the past when I've bought precision instruments because its pretty much makes the package indestructible. I'm not a 100% sure how it works, but it more or less is like a liquid mold of the package contents that fills in all the gaps and areas of the box and encapsulates the contents, and then totally solidifies. Its pretty hard stuff when it sets up too. You could hit it moderately hard with a ball pien hammer and not much would happen.So, I'm trying to get the insta-pack out of the box so I can get to the notcher, and I'm tugging and pulling and it just wants to keep coming out in one solid hunk instead of just the pieces coming out one at a time. So I actually had to pull the whole block of packaging and the TN-250 out as one piece and then work on removing the packaging once it was on the shop floor and I had some room to get violent with it Continued in next post due to # of image constraints...
Reply:I got it on the floor and got one corner ripped open (And I am telling you guys, this thing did not come apart easily, you definitely don't have to worry about it EVER being damaged during shipping. You know those plastic "blister packs" that electronics come in? Insta-pack is the shipment packing equivalent!) And then I got another piece torn off, and I had the sliding needle bearing block with 1 1/4 shaft and the angle scale. Then I had ANOTHER layer of the packaging to go through to get to the radial vise.After just a couple minutes of mount up time (The weight of this thing is pretty impressive and I seemed to noticed it especially when I was trying to hold it together and bolt it up myself, its BIG and bulky which is exactly what you need for rigidity!). I mounted it in my Wilton (I will probably make a stand or a more permanent mount on the corner of the big work bench pretty soon) and as you can see in the first picture, the TN-250 actually has a milled out portion at the bottom that goes into the vise jaws, and allows a portion of the plate thickness to actually sit on top of the jaws, which gives you additional rigidness as well. As a bonus, there are 2 mounting holes already drilled in this portion for more permanent mounting.The sliding shaft is just massive at 1.250. Its almost dumbfounding its so big. Interesting features/things that I haven't seen mentioned too much:The holesaw end of the shaft is internally threaded (and comes with an adapter for smaller threaded holesaws like I typically use). This gives you some creative options to do more things like put in center punches, drill bits, etc. with a little work and thought. Accurate angled weld in bolt bosses on tubing anyone? The off-set notching adjustment is pretty cool, as you can see from this picture how the whole angling assembly with the needle bearing slide shaft actually bolts onto the "main frame" with the vise in this groove and your able to slide it up and down for whatever offsets you want. Its scaled in 1/4 inch increments, but it would be easy with the way its designed to use a caliper if you wanted to get really picky about where it was positioned by going in between the block and the bottom of the groove. I really like the fact that it sits in this groove and doesn't just bolt up flat to the external part of the plate. Again, you can tell there was some thought put into the rigidity of this thing when they were designing and building it.The two Allen bolts are the pinch bolts for the angle adjustment. They are easily accessible with an Allen wrench and offer plenty of clamping force to keep it locked to whatever angle you set.
Reply:I was a little bit skeptical about the radial jaws of the vise, I wasn't really sure how much clamping force they would really be able to put down. Let me tell you, they get TIGHT. The fine pitch of the all-thread the handle turns allows you to really crank down and make the fingers tighten up. You can spin the thing around with your finger to get it closed up on the tubing enough to support itself, and then you can make about another half turn with the handle and it gets extremely rigid. I might make a demonstration with a torque wrench in the near future to prove what I'm talking about, but in the mean time believe me when I say it is seriously stout and and you will not have any issues with the vise supporting whatever it is your going to be notching.Speaking of the handle, check out how the shaft rides in an bronze bushing at the top by it.The angle scale is in 5* increments and is easy to see and line up with the red painted indicator. Sorry for the dark picture here, I kept playing with the camera settings and I either got a picture of the indicator without the scale, or a picture of the scale with barely being able to see the indicator.I had some pieces of 1.125 .083 Chromoly laying around that has an arch bend to it. They are some pieces I messed up on for building a swingarm. I'm going to use that to make my first notch with the TN-250. But first I had to change out the threaded adapter in the shaft to fit the smaller type holesaws, which was a piece of cake using an allen wrench to remove the larger sized arbor (Which is actually a set screw that threads into the end of the shaft). The smaller "stepped" sized arbor was threaded in (It is slotted at the end so you can put it in with a flat head screw driver).So then I was ready to setup for some notches, and notches we did! I was also very presently surprised that I did not experience any snags that I commonly hear about with hand drill operated notchers. Some of this may be attributed to the relatively smaller diameter and thin walled material I was cutting, but I think a lot of it is from the TN-250's overall rigidness it has.Then I swapped ends with my material and went again. I've always did the poor mans way of checking the levelness and making sure my notches were on the same plane by sticking a short piece of tubing on the opposite end in the first notch and rotating the tube until the "T" was level or on the same plane as the holesaw. Its worked good for me in the past but I definitely need to pick up a POB clamp and spare angle finder for when I start doing some more complex notches in longer/pre-bend pieces of material. I've always just used the mill and those types of notches have never really been an option for me until now because of the confines of the mill table.So here is what I ended up making real quick, and I also have some close ups of the joints I want you guys to see as well.
Reply:And here are the close ups of the joints. Keep in mind, these are un-ground. Its important to ALWAYS grind off the sharp edges of the notches to make sure your welding full thickness of the tube and not just a little thin shread hanging out in the middle. You want a dull-round profile all the way around. Most all fab guys know this, but I am showing the pictures un ground to give you an idea of how close and clean they are straight out of the notcher instead of showing you a finished ground ready to weld piece that could cover up any imperfections in the notch (There aren't any!) and I wanted to make sure any new guys or people that aren't familiar with the process don't get any wrong ideas.I will be doing a lot more with the TN-250 in the near future (I've already used it a little bit on a project in the shop). I'll be making some pretty interesting long notches for some gussets on that project that I've always had to screw around with the sawzawll and half round files to make fit right. Will take some more pictures and explanations/detail it was well in the coming week. I just wanted to get something posted up for you guys to see and get a scoop on what this thing really is all about.
Reply:Dang my images kinda messed up the thread....let me try and go back and edit them. Crud.Edit: Doesn't look like I can change the size unless I go back and re-upload them all. Sorry guys, didn't mean to do that.Last edited by BillyGoat; 01-16-2011 at 12:00 PM.
Reply:Pretty neat. I suppose I'll add it to the list of buys after I get a tiny bit of money back from the government. Great post.-JoeI can remember in the 7th grade my mom said "people will offer you drugs" by the 10th grade I was like, "where the hell are these people?"
Reply:right on!
Reply:Sign me up for one of those!Regards,RobGreat Basin WeldingInstagramBlue weldersRed weldersMy luscious Table DIY TIG Torch cooler