not strictly true..... the smaller units my college has are all about a grand and do an excellent job, for non industrial use they would be fine and are more than up to the job of rollcages, catch tanks etc etc. how they would fare in a heavy industrial enviroment with use 16 hours a day is however open to debate. on the other hand we do have an 8k industrial sized unit that stands bout 5 foot tall and could stitch a ship back together if we were so inclined