Hi all - (and many thanks Zax !)

I have been soaking up info for a couple of months on chinese lasers. Sure, it'd be nice to get a US or Euro laser, but it's not intended for constant use (semi professional only) and besides, the price differential is really huge.

Well honestly, I'm a bit confused - there are so many machines, and a lot of them look the same (bar the colour scheme) - what gives here ? Are they all fundamentally the same units / parts ?

I know that I want to cut card, 3mm ply and 3 and 5 mm acrylic (possibly thin ABS too). From what I've read, I need a 40 or 50 W laser and I want a 300 x 500 table - or there abouts. I've had a recommendation for York Laser - their 350D product that a French guy has been having a lot of fun with (nio's stuff » “Ichiro”). He seems to have paid 2000 ish Euros including import tax et al - that seems ok to me.

Perhaps all these machines are good enough for my needs - then it's a question of finding a supplier to trust when things don't quite go to plan - as can happen : )

So - I realise there's some risk in buying direct from China - but I did it before with a vinyl cutter - (which has been brilliant) - and support here in the UK is not always all that flash anyway - so I'm up for the challenges ahead.

What I'm really looking for is recommendations - given the parameters above (3 & 5 mm acrylic, 3 mm ply and various cards and so on). A smaller desktop machine would be fine (can you really keep it on a desk ?) - but not if that means I lose flexibility. I'm also wanting software that's reasonably flexible - and some of these boxes driven by newlydraw appears limited and others by something more open-ended like lasercut (which allows multiple passes etc)

Any and all comments and recommendations would be very gratefully received - thanks 4 reading !

Jol