I understand your concern. I think that there are other factors to consider though.
The current laser will break down at some point and the consensus seems that it is likely to do so sooner rather than later. If this happens and we don't take the uni laser we'll have a situation where we have no working laser and a big repair bill, with an unknown downtime.
You are right that swapping to this one needs to be planned to minimise downtime and we cant run both. However we will be in a better situation if we get this one and store it temporarily if we have to, while a transition plan is developed.
As always the trustees will facilitate as much as we can but we need members to step up to help plan the transition.
Until we see it working next week we won't know how much more training will be needed if any. It is likely that some training will be needed as the software process appears to be different. We can't plan who will deliver any training until we know what the differences are.
There are a few unknowns but I believe that getting it is a sensible decision. However, it would be foolish to take Mr Laser offline without a plan and target timeframe for the transition completion. The laser is usually busy in the lead up to Christmas, so we need to get it right, or wait until January. That might mean sacrificing some space in the main room temporarily.