Just saw something about this and curious about others take on it. Its certainly a niche pro tool at $2500 but i can imagine its value and utility. Appears to be essentially a steel cutting router on a magnetic base. Ive done maybe 20-30 hrs of welding in my life so dont have enough experience to really have an opinion
Plate bevelers are nothing new, this is just Metabo’s take on a fairly common tool for industrial welding shops. That said, an angle grinder can do the same job for a lot less money. I know many people who weld for a living and none of them have one. I’d be curious to try one out but whenever I’ve had to bevel something prior to welding I just grab a grinder, or if it’s big material I use a torch or a plasma cutter. Or better yet if the parts are small enough take them over to the stationary belt grinder.
The Metabo machine looks like a low cost - handheld solution to a task that we used a Baleigh machine to accomplish in our fabrication shop. I believe that the Baleigh machine could bevel 2 sides at once at various bevel angles - and could be brought to the work on its cart. It was not a home-shop sort of machine - and probably cost us a order of magnitude more than the Metabo. Either tool is probably more likely to be of use in a production environment - rather than in a custom welding shop - and certainly not in the field.
We did have similar shop and hand-held machines for pipe beveling - made by a company called Steelmax