Pledge: Laser cutter

We are looking at getting a laser cutter for the space

The item

The secondhand cutter that were were bidding on was sadly not won.

Focus will now be moved to getting the remaining cash to buy a new unit - unless a better option is found around the same price point. Among the benefits of buying this unit new is the 12 month warranty, and as shown in the auction, even broken units still fetch a large portion of their initial cost.

As we're in no great rush to buy a cutter - excitement aside - we should agree on a specification for the laser cutter and gather together information on potential cutter models and suppliers.

Specification

Min cutting area: A3 (297 × 420mm)
Min laser power: 40W
Warranty: Preferable. At least parts should be available in the UK.
Max purchase cost: However much people pledge. We can't fund this from Hackspace funds.

Potential laser cutters

Shame that we missed this 3kW metal cutting one. :-)
The exact same HPC laser model, without the branding and 10W more power, from china. Apparently they sometimes need realigning, but are otherwise just as good.
Older, less powerful (25W), but a bigger engraving area (almost A2) Epilog Laser for £1350. Needs 110V supply and is in Scotland so £130 shipping.
This one is about A2 size and is slightly cheaper than the HPC A3 one. Probably still too expensive though :-(
identify.co.uk have provided me a price list, but we're talking about £7900+VAT for a 30W Epilog Zing, so a little over budget. There's potential to hire the units for £50 a week though (based on 5 years).
I've emailed gs-lasers.com for pricing info on their CadCam units, but I'm guessing these are going to blow our budget sky high too. Turns out their sales email address is bouncing.
We could build our own Lasersaur.

Additional information

Andy Slater has some interesting information on buying from China, and setting up and modifying this class of machines.
Another persons set-up/modifications for this type of machine purchased direct from China.
Some useful laser info from Adafuit - the settings section in particular gave a good idea of what we can expect.

Pledges

£100 --Solexious 22:50, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
£100 --b3cft 14:48, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
£200 --Teabot 09:06, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
£100 --Harry 10:20, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
£100 --Artag 14:00, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
£100 --MattP 14:57, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
£100 --Jonty 15:00, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
£50 --theSecondMouse 15:04, 14 July 2010 (UTC) & Driving to collect
£100 --Russ 15:07, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
£100 --Meurig 10:17, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
£100 --Nigle 15:15, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
£100 -- BOfH 15th July 14:39
£100 --dsikar 23:55, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
£100 --t0m 03:05, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
£100 --Amc 13:15, 4 August 2010 (BST)

Running total: £1550