This came up once before, but no one answered, so I'll ask again... what facilities, if any, does Mach have for controlling Chinese lasers?

I imagine none as if it did, it would be a major selling point.  The packaged software (NewlyDraw, MoshiDraw, etc.) is usually one step above controlling an Etch-A-Sketch   If ArtSoft is willing to add in the functionality, I'd be willing to provide some reverse engineering capabilities on my side (electrical engineer by education, software/firmware programmer by career).  I can't imagine their protocols are very complicated.

Thoughts?

Mach will control a laser just fine, just get the plugin here:
http://www.machsupport.com/artsoft/plugin.htm

You will need to have motor controllers that take step direction signals and thats pretty much it.

With the plugin one of the pins outputs a PWM signal to control the laser on time.
I bought a Sharplan 40 watt CO2 laser to build a engraver cutter just don't have a need for it right now, so haven't built it.

Dennis,

I suppose my question was a bit open to interpretation... when I wrote "Chinese lasers", I was speaking of the entire machine, not just a laser tube.  Units from Rabbit, Redsail, etc.  I recently picked up a machine similar to the Rabbit HX40.  The control program is called NewlyDraw 1, which requires a USB dongle to operate.  I've never been a fan of dongles as they're nothing but a recipe for failed installations, and the Chinese to English translation on the GUI leaves a lot to be desired (e.g., needing to choose "scan" for engraving settings).  All images need to be imported or drawn directly in NewlyDraw... the drawing facilities are poor, at best, and the import facilities are a complete kludge that need constant tweaking and rarely get things correct (that is, IF you can get something to import).

I don't need the ability to draw directly in Mach3 (Corel and such do that best), but I want a program controlling the laser that will not need constant tweaking, won't lose settings every time I start it up, will import an image or Gcode without balking or adding in extra lines because the import code is FUBAR'ed, etc.

See what these guys say:
http://www.solustan.com/products/Co2Laser