Hello Folks!
I've been doing homework on chinese lasers, and stumbled upon cnccheap's Redsail X700.
From what I've been reading, Redsail seems to be a fairly reputable chinese laser manufacturer, and cnccheap is, for all intents and purposes, Redsail direct.
The photos of the X700 both cnccheap's website, and the ebay page look very promising indeed, the X700 seems to be a fairly handsome machine overall, and seems well built from photographs.
The current roughly $2300 price seems to include CIF shipping to LAX, and seems a little low for the type of machine I'm looking at here. I'm not sure what sort of "gotchas" I need to worry about, considering the price is the same or cheaper than the available Shenhui G350s which are about half the size. I'm all for a good deal but a shipped price at just over twice that of a chintzy K70 laser makes me think I'm not seeing the whole picture here.
This'd be for hobbyist use. I'm fairly familiar with how these devices work. I'm currently helping a gentleman replace the electronics in his unknown brand chinese laser with a LightObject DSP, I'm not afraid of getting under the hood and banging on things when they don't work.
Additionally, I've never imported anything from china before. One of the main reasons I'm considering the X700 (beyond it seeming to be a quality machine by my untrained eye) is that it seems they're taking care of getting it to a warehouse at the port (Los Angeles in my case) and all I'll have to take care of is customs and import business. I'm wondering what sort of "surprises" there are in doing things this way, and if it's more hassle than its worth.
I've been reading back through all of the X700 threads here. I'd like to ask anyone with an X700 (or other redsail laser for that matter) to please comment about your laser, what you like, dislike, and have advice about. I figure I'll probably order some spare parts with the laser as well.
Thank you very much!
-C