With my ill gotten gains from the summer I bought myself a laser cutter. It is a 30cm by 40cm machine from Shen Hui Laser Company based in China.
https://shenhuilaser.en.alibaba.com/
It was a bit of a performance getting it. First with the money transfer and then with TNT not communicating with itself.
But it arrived.

Unpacking revealed the quality of the components.

Not very good. There was great big screw in the middle of the work-bed which threw out any pretensions of a level work surface. And the airhose is of the cheapest material and finish one could imagine.
The provided software was unintuitive and useless.
Customer support is non-existent.
Thankfully there is the interweb. I found a piece of software called K40 Whisperer and some support groups dedicated to Chinese laser cutters.
It is slow and takes a couple of passes to cut through anything so it is only useful for prototyping ideas.

For the real work I’ll have to continue using Happylab in Salzburg.