I'm unsure how anyone thinks the US, or European companies CAN compete with those prices? When someone can sell you parts cheaper than you can buy the materials, how can you compete? You can't have people pay YOU to come to work for them. It's all done with a huge mask on and we, as buyers, tend to hold our nose, close our eyes, and hit the "Buy now" button on it, knowing full well that if we really thought about it, we'd not do it because it's not a level playing field. When China devalues their currency to a point that no one can compete and their workers drop dead at 40 because they worked in the granite factories Rodney posted photos of for 20 years, breathing dust that slowly kills them, how can we compete?

They have no safety concerns for the people (or little, when it comes to hazardous materials), they pay people next to nothing, and they devalue their currency. Do I blame Epilog or Universal for not being able to compete with that? No, I don't.

Also keep in mind, buying a machine for $15,000 (that's about what a 45W cost these days), gets you a machine plus life time support for free. Free. I bet if these companies had to support their products on the level Epilog and Universal do, and pay their people a fair wage, they wouldn't be so inexpensive.

It's apples and oranges to me.

I'm not saying anything about the quality or their ability to engrave by any means. They probably do a decent job. However, let's not pretend this is a fair competition and that it's the US manufacturers that are taking advantage of us. That's miles away from the real fact on why they are so inexpensive.