Originally Posted by
KeithOKC
To clarify, by domestic I mean one manufacturered in the US or Europe. Trotec, Epilog, Universal. Chinese lasers sold in the USA/UK are still Chinese lasers. Chinese lasers are work fine and cheaper but have more maintenance and less capabilities when engraving.
I disagree on the glass vs metal/ceramic tubes. I'm not sure even what data you are basing this on, there is no data out there that would say a glass tube would consistently beat a meat/ceramic tube. Unless it's published by the glass tube manufacturers lol! Metal/ceramic last longer, have less malfunctions, provide a more reliable beam, and do not have to be cooled by water.
Also disagree on the proprietary software, Trotec proprietary software is the industry leader, far above the Chinese lasercut stuff. eLaser says avoid proprietary software because all the chinese machines use a few basic programs, this is NOT an advantage however. They work ok but lack some of the nice features of US/Europe manufacturers software like direct printing from illustrator/corel (some Chinese software prints from certain versions of Corel but not all).
One thing I do agree with on elaser's assessment is Chinese lasers are much less expensive. That is an advantage in their court.