Diminished power on long prints

I just wanted to suggest 2 features that would be useful for long prints. Glowforge should automatically schedule cool down breaks so that the laser doesn’t decrease power. If there is still loss in power (cut depth) than you should be able to hold down the start button to “rewind” the motion of the head to where it first started fading, and restart from that point.

You shouldn’t be experiencing diminished power across long cuts. If the laser (coolant temp) crosses a particular threshold, it will indeed pause.

If you’re experiencing a decrease in power throughout your cuts, you should probably give the details - pictures, print time including time zone, etc. so that support can help get you fixed up.

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Welcome to the forum. What you are describing is not normal for long prints. Could you provide pictures of what you are describing and also information regarding the material being used?

Yeah, definitely not expected behavior. Many owners run prints that last over an hour, for example, that perform as well at the end as they do at the start.

The way support diagnoses power issues is to ask you to run the gift of good measure on PG med draftboard, then provide pics, but that’s not a very long print.

If you machine is really losing power, perhaps you could load it but then upload a long job that you know causes the issue as well, making sure it runs first, then moves on to the GoGM steps as part of the same print.

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I can confirm that I’ve run jobs that have lasted 4 hours and have consistent results throughout. It’s possible that the material you’re working with is affecting the optics of the laser, and it’s also possible that temperatures are affecting your particular machine, but the final conclusion would definitely need to come from support. As these other guys mentioned, if you want to get the ball rolling, print a gift of good measure, let the machine refocus and update after it’s done without opening the lid, take pics of both the front and back, include your timezone and the time that you did the work. If your machine only does this after a long print, it may be difficult to convey with the GoGM since it only takes a few minutes to make.

I had insufficient power in one of my machines and took pics of the difference of what it should look like vs what it did look like. Are your prints similar to this?


This is the inconsistent engrave, take note of right below the neck, and being able to see the passes the laser took, as well as it not engraving as deeply.


This is what it should have looked like.

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