re: Lets talk about LASERS

Lightburn has a great series of YouTube videos that shows how to do almost anything you’d want to do, and pretty simply. It’s a very powerful program. 

As for the lasers themselves, man, it’s a big world. The Chinesium stuff is cheap…and hit or miss. I’m still very happy with my Ortur machine, although there are times I’d like a 20W head..mine is the 10W. That said, I do almost entirely decorative stuff, so it works fine for me usually. On softer woods, I could probably carve recesses deep enough to do an epoxy inlay…I haven’t actually tried that. If I was to do it again, I’d go with a US based machine. At least you’d have (likely) better customer service and better QC. You’re gonna pay for it but Buy-Once-Cry-Once. 

I can’t comment on the CO2 or other machines, as I’ve got no experience with them. The duckster has long history with CO2 lasers…

Some things to consider:
How big are the projects you want to use the laser on?
Do you intend to do the laser work on piece pre-assembly, or the whole item post?
Are you wanting to cut with the laser? How thick?
What materials do you intend to burn?
How important is speed to you?
Budget?

Answering these questions will help narrow down the field a bit…

I second the support for LA Hobby Guy. Lots of good images/libraries there and a lot of great info in the threads…