John Weeks

Web developer who built Laser Oracle after trying to work out what power and speed to cut a sheet of birch ply at, and finding the answer lived in Facebook groups rather than anywhere citable. The site does not test machines. It reads the manufacturer’s own documentation, quotes the figure, dates it, and says plainly when a maker publishes nothing at all.

What I can claim, and what I cannot

I have not cut anything on these machines, and nothing on this site says I have. The channels in this category buy every machine and run material through it, and they are better than us at that — permanently. What they mostly do not do is publish the specification, which is why a buyer can watch four reviews of a machine and still not learn whether it will fit on their bench or connect to the extractor they own.

So the work here is reading manuals. Every working area, duct diameter, power figure and licence price is quoted from the maker's own documentation with the date it was read, and where a maker publishes nothing the page says so rather than filling the gap with an estimate. That is a smaller claim than a review, and it is one I can actually defend.

The other site

I also built and run Ebike Oracle, which does the same job for electric bikes: sourced specifications, cited and dated, rather than opinion. Both sites are independent, both are funded by affiliate commission, and neither accepts payment for coverage or placement.

Mentioned here because it is true and because you should know who is behind a site before you trust its numbers — not as an endorsement of either one.

Corrections

If a figure here is wrong, it is worth more to me than it is to you to have it fixed. Every specification carries the source it came from and the date it was read, so a correction is usually a matter of checking whether the maker has updated their document. How the sourcing works is set out on the about and methodology page.

Elsewhere

• X: @johnweeksdev
• LinkedIn: jonathanweeks007