I have a Metal Pro 4000, and I will say that it is a toy. It is fine for My home shop. In the plant there was an old mechanical Peddinghaus 44T. That was a fine machine, built like a machine tool. A guy on the blacksmithing site reasearched it thoroughly a few years ago, and He got the Geka. You can ask Him [Rese Nimi] at Forgemagic.com if You want His reasons.

check out the line of ironworkers made by piranha at http://www.megamfg.com/  my shop has the PII-65, awsome machine,
not sure what you' like to know, but  it cost about 20k, 2 station, shears 1/4 x 24" to 3/4 x 8" a-36 plate, punches just about anything, has a notcher at the one end shears 5" angle,has an 18" bending jig  ,and there are many other available attachments. we upgraded from a P-50 about 5 years ago, but both machines are work horses.
If its more for home maybe a bantam ironworker would work for you           

Hi "Weldseller!!!"

They are both well made machines but then again, it all depends the volume of work going through them that's real important in choosing the correct model to hold up from the long term abuse... The flexability in the various features & uses of which the machines are capable in offering the customer/end user...

Another issue that's very important is to find out which brand machines offer the best built in safety features...Then there's the issue of what types of voltages and KW are required to run the beasts... You do'nt want to have a brute that sucks all of the money out of your budget just to run it... Finally, what types of warranty/service plans are available from the manufacturer of the equipment by the network of their regional service centers.
Just my two cents :) :) :)

Respectfully,
Henry

Hello welderseller, I have read through many of the posts that have been entered here and obviously there are a lot of different ironworkers out there and they all have some nice features and some are better than others. At my shop currently we have a Mubea/Bender KBL 1/2" mechanical ironworker, in many ways probably similar to a Peddinghaus. I personally prefer the mechanical ironworkers over most of the hydraulic models for a few simple reasons. 1. Most of the hydraulic machines can only utilize one station at a time, so this limits the machines use to one operator. 2. Most hydraulic machines do not have the ability to spot the punch before making the hole, by that I mean that on many of the mechanical machines you can bring the punch down to the work with a handle to line it up on your punch mark before pulling the other handle that will engage the punching feature, in my estimation this helps greatly in many instances. 3. Somewhat referring back to 1., on the particular machine that I have you can have 3 operators on this machine as it has three seperate station areas that work independently of one another. 4. The power consumption of this ironwork is next to nothing for a comparable hydraulic model(the machine that I have is a 55 ton capacity and is driven by a 1 1/2 hp motor, a comparable hydraulic machine will generally probably have a 7 1/2 to 10 hp motor so considerably greater power is consumed). Along the lines of craftsmanship, these older mechanical machines, in my estimation, posess considerably greater degrees of craftsmanship and stoutness than the majority of newer ones. I realize that mechanical machines are probably hard if not impossible to find these days as new units and if you can they will likely be considerably more expensive than their hydraulic counterparts, but I wouldn't trade the old one that I've got for any of the newer hydraulic models. Just my personal thoughts and a few cents worth of information. Regards, aevald
     One other thing that came to mind to me in regards to many of the hydraulic ironworkers, the punching geometry is not square for the punch and die, meaning that on some of the hydraulic units the punch travels in an arc as it passes through it's motion instead of travelling in a square motion to the punch. This leads to issues for the life of the die sets and also the quality of the punched holes. It can also lead to issues with doing set-ups on the machine when you are trying to fixture multiple hole punching on base plates and other types of things.

My father in law has a Geka and likes it a lot. It out does the Parahna, big time.....