Hi All, We are new to this forum hubby and I work with wood and I specifically work with leather. Until now I have been outsourcing my laser cutting. We now want to purchase our own.

We have been looking at The Shenhui and Triumph machines in the 600 x 900 size. We also visited our local trotec this week and tested a speedy 300. Heres were we are stuck in AUS Trotec are super expensive i mean 30,000 AUD for a second hand speedy 300 where a shenhui can be made and delievered for 3600 USD.

I have been reading all the threads in this forum and it appears alot of you have the shenhui machines. What have been the biggest problems you have encountered. What mods are worth it? Can you plug and play straight from the crate or do they always require some fixes before use?

when it comes to the trotec honestly we just dont have the money. We understand it is a superior machine with its ceramic tubes and air cooling system. The support here in AUS is good to they come out install the machine and train you how to use it. But is all that really make the price 10x more than a chinese laser?

What are we doing with it primarily the machine will be for cutting and engraving leather of thicknesses no larger than 2mm.
There may be small wood and acrylic jobs for making display units but that is very minor.
I need to be able to cut the leather in one pass due to the organic nature of the material.

Hubby is very mechanically minded and I am already drawing my designs in auto cad so when it comes to software we are sorted to an extent.

I understand it takes time to learn these machines but are we talking days, weeks or months?

Through reading the laser threads i have figured out that we must order the CW5000 water chiller and make sure the machin has a reci tube. The shenhui people say they use the better imported lenses I really have no idea about this one.

We are ready to buy just need some opinions to make sure we are making the right decision.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Adam and Bec