I have a JW Weike LC6090 80w laser that from the sounds of what you have been hearing should just not be able to do the job but I think my system could do it quite well. My system is at least 2 yrs old and has cut for well over 1200hrs, most of it on my last $350 laser tube. I have engraved glass, marble, leather and wood. I can easily cut up to 1/4" wood, up to 3/4" of acrylic and 1/8" leather in a single pass. I may be able to go thicker on these but these are the thickest I have tried. I can cut the finest paper or thin cardboard and the cuttings can be blown out with a light breath.
Are the Chinese lasers perfect, not by a long shot. The manuals are near useless being written in Chinglish, translated by someone who definitely has little or no written use of English. All the words in a sentence may indeed be English but they often make NO sense whatsoever. The tech support is also wanting but at least JW Weike who I bought mine from always has techs online on MSN, so questions can be answered and due to the wonder of different time zones they magically appear online about the time I start playing with my laser in the evening.
The software itself is in a word bad, but you can learn to work around the problems. I use the Corel 12 drivers and it works well enough for it to do everything I have asked of it. Sometimes you shake your head and wonder why it does something the way it does, but I get over it and within a few minutes I have figured out how to make it do what I want.
The Chinese parts are well built, overbuilt in fact. I have bearings on this thing large enough to be car bearings! The case is made not of think aluminum or even thin sheet steel, it's bloody plate steel!
I have lost two tubes to breakage and two power supplies as well (running at 100% power), so buy spare parts. Lenses wear out so get a few extras of those as well. I have found that by running at 85%-90% power I seemed to have stopped my tubes from prematurely failing. My current tube has about 700 hrs on it and it's working fine.
As has been said if you are a full business that will rely on your laser to only generate cash and you don't have any tech skills I'd go with a domestic laser. However, if you can add memory to your PC, maybe install a new video card and feel comfortable tinkering with stuff and want to save a PILE of cash then a Chinese laser just might be for you.
I'll probably order a second one soon and I'll probably order from the same folks again
Thanks
Mike
www.classicplayfields.com