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Showerthought: I bought a $400 'universal' tube expander that couldn't handle a simple 2-inch job.
The sales guy swore it was perfect for any boiler tube work, but the mandrel snapped clean through on the third pull. I had to rent the right tool anyway and lost a full day's pay on that site. Anyone else get burned by a tool that promised too much?
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grace9262mo ago
Sounds like a bad day, not a bad tool.
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I get what you're saying about the company being embarrassing, but I actually think that "you get what you pay for" thing doesn't always hold up. Sometimes you pay a premium price for a name brand tool and it still fails because the design is just bad from the start. A $400 price tag should mean more than just a brand sticker, it should mean the tool was actually tested on the jobs it claims to handle. The real problem here is companies selling specialized tools as "universal" when they know full well they cut corners on the mandrel material to keep costs down. I'd be more mad at the marketing team than the whole company itself, since the sales guy was probably just reading off a spec sheet he didn't understand.
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josephf102mo ago
Oh man, that's the worst. I've seen those "universal" tools before. They're never universal. It's always some cheap cast part that can't handle real torque. You get what you pay for, but sometimes you pay a lot and still get junk. A snapped mandrel on the third pull is just embarrassing for the company that made it.
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