Thanks Guys.
JH,
This thread has just somehow grown and grown, I was going to stop after about page 10 once the build was complete but with the ideas and suggestions from others I keep trying new things and learning new stuff. By sharing my experiences I hope others can build on them and in turn feedback their experiences etc.
The laser, as a tool, has certainly turned out to be more versatile than I had originally expected and thanks to the extra work Art has put into improvements to the Laser/Engraving plugin over the last month or so, things have just got better. Although my machine is not built for raster engraving, the Mach plugin has enabled me to obtain reasonably high standards of work (equal, I think to the low/mid price range professional machines).
It would be really nice to have someone else do a laser project / build log etc.
Tweakie.