I recently acquired one of these 40w lasers from China, after hearing all the horror stories on here I wasn't expecting much but figured it was a good place to start learning lasers and with the recent price drops they are under $400 now so why not take a chance on a project.
What arrived really surprised me! Initial thoughts was that it came well packed, double boxed, adequate packing, nothing missing.
Mine came with Corellaser and Laserdrw, so far software wise it's been pretty uneventful, already had Coreldraw installed so installed Corellaser and plugged in the key dongle and that worked fine. It's USB and plugging it in I got a notification that said laser machine connected.
Before plugging it in however I did the usual of opening everything up and checking over the wiring, I was shocked to see how nice it was! Everyone seems to find crazy problems and quality control issues in these but mine was nice and clean and tidy. Heatshrink on connections, all the wiring to the control panel was loomed and anchored with cable ties, proper crimps on terminals, good soldering, I couldn't find anything wrong. The panel with the switches and meter is a removable steel panel with a thick vinyl label over it, sturdy and good finish, doors fit well and everything seems pretty sound electrically and mechanically.
Came with the same crappy blue exhaust hose as others and the exhaust fan is pretty cheap but works, I already replaced the exhaust system so no worries there.
After getting water running through it and the air bubbles pushed out I checked mirror alignment and it was really quite good! The second mirror needed a slight tweak as it was a bit high but that didn't take long to fix. I am replacing the head with the air assist one from light object and that's all going well. A quick mirror adjustment and it should be good.
But back to the beginning, after getting the software installed and water running I did a couple test engraves and they looked great, cut some 3mm acrylic and no problems there, set it to 10mA and 5mm/s and it produced a nice looking cut without any fuss.
Either they have really stepped up their game or I was lucky and got a good one, but so far I'm really impressed.
Once I'm done with all the upgrades and modifications I will post some more pictures but for now I gotta say for the money to have a working laser cutter that was running fine in less than an hour from receiving it is a win in my book!