Benders? JD2 model 3 or model 4?

I am looking to go in 1/2 on a bender with a buddy. I figure I'd be much better off buying a decent hydraulic bender and a few dies then paying alot of $$ for tube work.

I am just unsure what I need besides a JD2 and it needing a hydraulic model. I know dies arn't cheap either. My plans are an exo cage with some nice close bends and my buddy plans on a cage for his CJ, both plan on adding tube to our bumpers, etc..

So whats the bender that will get it done? Also what about software? I'll be adding a computer to the shop later on.

I am looking to just get the series 3 bender with bendtech software and air/hydraulic kit for around $1500.

I want to run 1.5" .188 wall DOM tubing for my exocage, is this a good size/thickness? I see alot of .120 wall, but that seems thin.

Just got my model 4 set up.



First impressions have been very nice.
Definitely spring for the software.
The Bend-Tech Pro pretty much idiotproofs the whole process.

.120 wall may dent slightly easier than .188 but is plenty strong and I wouldn't hesitate to use it.

We have a JD2 and converted it to hydro with the HF 8 ton jack. (teres a bunch of directions online) Works great, weve built about 10 bumpers, 6 sets of tube fenders, an exo cage, a scrambler cage, and a few other things. It gets the job done.

As for programs, we do have Bend ez tech but we never seems to finish the job with it. We end up just using a good old anglefinder and our thumbs