I had never heard of it until your post.

 

It pops up now and then. Usually with people interested in it, but nobody willing to pay the (high!) price to be the guinea pig.
As soon as I have some hands-on time with it I'll post about it.
The claims are pretty impressive, but you know how that goes...

 

Hey a journeyman at our shop has one he got it when we were doing a job bending about 600 pieces of pipe that had to be identical they were in-between two light fixtures mounted on angled bracks the bender worked wonders for that job

 

I have one down in the basement. It didn't magically transform my lame bending skills into some of the work seen on this site. Then again I bend tons of pipe...

 

Now I wanna try and bend a perfect hoop out of 3/4" EMT just to see if I can....

-John

 

They've got you all fooled, it's a silver hula hoop. Attempted it once in shop class in high school, didn't work so well but it was a much tighter hoop than that one by far.

I've never used Greenlee or Klein hand benders, only Benfield or GB and my Ideal.

 

I've tried it. It wasn't a 'trial by fire' by any means, but I did a few offsets and a 90, and I was startled how consistent it was. Once you get used to bending against the stop (and stopping when you hit it) you save that time that would normally be spent looking at the angle mark, bending a bit more, looking again, etc. The 90 was right on 90 degrees, too.
It doesn't sort out your dog-legs, though. :jester:

Part of the reason why it has a 6-3/8" stub instead of a 5" stub is because the 'arrow' is the leading edge of the shoe. It doesn't have the arrow after the 'hook' that pulls the pipe up, but rather before. It's a bit odd to get used to, but then it makes a lot of sense because you can see it instantly, and you can see all around the pipe so you don't have those situations where you marked the pipe but the mark is on the 'bottom' of the pipe where you can't see it. With the hoppy bender you can see all around the pipe. Also, you don't have to allow a bit for the bend to make sure it fits flush against an obstruction... it leaves an inch un-bent after your mark, so it fits.
The back-of-bend mark looks odd - like a lightning bolt - but it makes sense when you use it. The angle at the end of the line matches the angle that your mark is on the pipe (assuming you marked in a normal fashion, perpendicular to the axis of the pipe). Some benders have their star mark angled for this same reason. Others, like some Kleins I've used, don't angle it and they SUCK to use for this reason.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with it. We'll see how happy I am with the 6-3/8" stub if I get into a bunch of back-to-back bending. I'm putting it in the service truck and it will be my go-to bender (for 1/2") unless it starts to tick me off. I'll keep you posted if there is any change in my affection for the Hoppy Bender.