Help on buying engraver from china

[louisa tuohy]

Hi All
We am just new to the forum.
We are from Ireland and setting up an engraving business.
We are looking at buying a laser engraver, we have looked at it from a cost point of view and the only one we could afford would be buying one from China.

We am looking to engrace dog tags, pet pictures on tags- acrylic, glass, slate

We have been in contact with a few suppliers from China, the basic cost of the machines are quiet cheap, but then they suggest that I should upgrade with the following

high grade cooling system
imported focus lens
red dot
servo motor
reci laser tube


Do I require all of the above?
What laser power would i need to do the above?

we plan to use adobe illustrator for pictures

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated


Kind Regards
Louisa

[Jimmy Young]

Hi I am interested in laser machine
I know a software which is very popular.It can be embedded in AI and CorelDraw directly.That means you may do your design in AI /CorelDraw and output the design to machine directly.

[Deane Donaghy]

I got an X700 from Redsail and for the money I have no complaints so far.
I was warned against buying any of the real cheap Chinese lasers off Ebay that run Moshi Draw, supposed to be nothing but trouble.
Buy the best you can afford, a good chiller is a good option, spare tube and lens & mirror.
Corel Draw seems to be the favoured choice and has a plug-in for Lasermate which came with my Redsail.
I made my own red dot pointer with a $10 ebay laser pointer and it works fine