I have the conturo, but I'm surprised at how well designed the Le-Matic system is. The edge bander itself looks more archaic however, but it seems to do the job. One thing that strikes me though is how far it extends forward under the work piece, while the conturo practically doesn't. Lots of pieces would be too narrow to do freehanded with Le-Matic, looks like their table is indispensable for those. The band cut tool on the table set up is a great feature to streamline work.
However they seem to use the table to set up the trimmers, in reality you have to band two parallel sides of a panel, trim them, and only then is it possible to band the other two sides. You'd need a separate table in reality or do it by hand if you want to avoid switching tools in the table constantly.
The passive vacuum clamps look great, not sure how effective they are on veneer though. And I wonder how the glue pellets work, I suppose the machine has to melt the entire batch, which if comparable to stationary edge banders, could take 20 minutes or much more. And there would be a lengthy pause between refills, and is there a clean up required after each use?
The conturo is more fool proof, heats up quite rapidly and can be used or held at angles without spilling dangerously hot glue. It also tells you on screen how much you can do, and when done you turn it off and let it cool down, no maintenance or clean up.
So I'd say the conturo is the better machine, but Le-Matic has a much more complete and thought-through system built around theirs, since you can probably purchase those separately you could set up the perfect Frankenstein system by taking the best of both.
