I've been seriously considering pulling the trigger on a fiber laser. Jimani's blog page has been a tremendous resource. And I MAY wind up just buying a laser through him anyways depending on what kind of price quote I can get.

Failing that... is it possible to buy one of these $5,000 chinese fiber lasers and just control it with a PC with pro-lase? From what I'm reading, all of these cheap chinese lasers seem to ship with EZcad and it might not be the greatest software going.

My intended use would mostly be marking and depth engraving aluminum, small steel parts, that sort of thing. Marking plastics would be nice but not my primary goal.

I've had an old epilog co2 laser for years now. It's still going strong. But I've had to turn alot of people away for lack of depth engraving on metals.

What's ya'lls thoughts on this? Do those of you with Chinese fiber lasers regret the purchase? Is EZcad really that lousy? Have you tried to use Pro-lase? If so, was it difficult to switch?

Any particular brand/make I need to steer clear of?