You’ve offered nothing but support and positive insight. This is VERY MUCH appreciated. There is nothing I want more than for this thing to work as expected so that I can start making and sharing my designs with the community.
Honestly, I like the cooling solution you suggested. But aside from having to purchase additional parts and cut through a rather expensive table, I’m not entirely convinced that it won’t void the warranty of the machine. Reading through GF’s warranty agreement, it reads as if they are taking an aggressive stance on voiding the warranty for minor things. Blowing cooled air directly into the air intake could easily fall under their vague definitions of “product misuse” or “damage caused by modification to the product”.
In a separate topic, GF mentioned they moved on to an email thread with me. For clarity, they sent one email two days ago explaining that they’re hoping the community can offer a solution. Since then, I haven’t heard back. Until they can confirm for me, in writing, that a community solution linked from a category with the disclaimer “Following it may void your warranty…” does not, in fact, void my warranty, the machine is sitting idle.
Unfortunately in your case, it sounds like you already have sufficient knowledge of the issues impacting your machine that alternatives to help cool the machine down to an operable temperature haven’t been suggested.
I know that the folks from the support side are making suggestions as well, so I’m not going to bother to repeat what they have likely told you. I would like to add that there have been a couple of tricks that they might not mention, that other customers have had really good success with.
One of those is to raise the machine up on a couple of props (1"x4"s) under the runners to increase air flow to the intake, and then point a fan directly at that (underneath from the right side) to direct cooler air into the machine. That has the benefit of shortening the length of the pauses that the machine has to go through. (And make sure that the air intake at the lower right side of the machine isn’t blocked.)
Another is to open the lid between long prints - that generally only works though if the ambient temperature around the machine is cooler than the operating range.
You said you had an air conditioned house…, it is very easy to direct the cooling to the room that the machine is in, just by closing a few vents in unused rooms. (I have to wear a sweater in my office in the summer now, but I don’t really have to have the upstairs air conditioned during the day, so it works out fairly well. And i live in Houston, where it is hot about 80% of the year.) Adding a smaller portable AC to the room is also an option to bring the temp down even further, and it won’t void your warranty.
If you haven’t browsed through the Beyond the Manual section yet, there are some very clever solutions for cooling the machines off - even in tropical climates. Here are a few, you can search the category yourself for others if you want them:
Other than that, there isn’t going to be much we can suggest. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.
Yeah playing it safe is a good idea. As for cutting your table, you might not need to go that far. Placing a local cooling solution to the right side of your GF might be all you need. Let me see if I can find that post about the ice, it’ll give you a laugh.
I still can’t believe that worked
(also, btw, it’s Dave, as in David Evans. Common mistake.
@evansd2: Despite what I said about NOT trying this yourself, I’ve done this several times since, but without the full ice-bucket treatment. I simply put a frozen “blue ice” block under the front-left-side of the Glowforge—where the air intake is. I’ve done this when the cut job refused to start because of “cooling”. Note that my cut jobs are seldom more than 20 minutes.
The reason I believe they say “recommended” is because it’s not ambient temps that initiate temperature restrictictions, but coolant temps. There is a close correlation to the two, but it’s not an r +1.
If you’re forcing, producing, or otherwise allowing condensation to enter the system, I can very much see GF voiding the warranty. Perhaps if my machine had been up and running a while, I’d likely be more inclined to give this a try - particularly if it was something I wouldnt need to do regularly. But on a brand new machine where this will need to be standard operating procedure, I’m reluctant to use this as a solution.
Not that I can see. It has been over 60% humidity here for weeks now. I subscribe to the theory that the moisture that collects on the cooling source (i.e., my blue ice blocks) is evidence that the work-around lowers the humidity that the Glowforge sees. (After all, I have a degree in Chemistry—although no one has paid me for that since graduate school—decades ago!)
But I will say while I am not a HVAC professional and I in no way speak for GF staff… it seems to me that the cool air coming into the GF from this sort of thing would likely be drier than ambient and well above dew point, so no condensation inside the GF itself.
If you significantly cooled the Glowforge to the point where the GF itself was colder than the ambient room temperature, it would probably condense on the outside in a manner similar to a cold glass of water. I somehow doubt that’s happening here.
I think it’s safe to say that a closed radiator system is better as you aren’t exposing water into the environment, but I doubt we’ll see much extra water being put into the ambient air in this situation. Experimentation (thanks @lightner!) seems to bear this out.
I’m going to chime in just for the heck of it, because a couple weeks ago I moved my GF to a location that’s definitely out of spec. Rescued an old window AC from the basement, pointed it at the back of the GF, and all is fine.
(As a pedant, I’d also like to object to the word “brick”, which in this context should, I think, be used for permanent disabling)
I decided to take a shot and try the “blue ice” trick described. I figured this would be the least intrusive to the device. After about 15 min of the GF running it’s cooling cycle, I grabbed my digital kitchen thermometer as I could feel that the air coming out the exhaust was much cooler than the ambient air.
Low and behold, measurements show 72 degrees at the intake and 74 degrees at the exhaust:
Yes, the ambient temp in the room is warm - the AC is set to 82 - but temperature through the machine is within spec. Again, this measurement was taken after the machine was cooling for 15+ min.
I can build a more streamlined and efficient cooling system for my set-up, but I can’t say I’m encouraged it will be an effective solution if pushing the desired temps didn’t work in this test.
Nope. It stayed in cooling mode. I cancelled the print, tried to rerun it, and the machine went straight back into cooling mode.
So now I’m really at a loss since the air passing through the machine was at spec for an extended amount of time. Best I can guess is maybe the liquid inside the cathode was still outside the range? Nevertheless, I gave the machine what it wanted and it still refused to work.
Well, (as you likely know since you already have worked with lasers), what we’re waiting for is for the liquid in the tube to cool down to the air temperature. If there is cooler air around it, from you blowing it into the machine, it will cool off faster than it would if there was just hot air in there.
But this kind of passive cooling might take a little longer than 15 minutes if the tube liquid is at eighty degrees or so. It’s got to radiate off of the hot glass. Maybe try giving it a little longer - bring the temperature down below 75° if you can - the farther down you get it, the longer the machine will run without having to pause to cool.
The tube heats up from 6 to 10 degrees over the ambient temperature after a job, so it might take some time to cool off from that.
As a long term solution, I’d seriously consider something like a window unit AC to keep the whole room a little cooler. If you do that, opening the lid will speed up the cooling period. Right now, if the air is hotter outside the machine, opening the lid will actually work against you.
Yeah, that all makes sense. I’m having a hard time accepting how this is superior engineering to cathodes that will run for days with a waterline attached.
For me, this feels squarely landed in tech-industry solutionism - where an innovative feature is created that doesn’t actually solve a user problem.
(After all, I have a degree in Chemistry—although no one has paid me for that since graduate school—decades ago!) 
