I was just wondering if everyone turns off their machine when they are finished for the day? I left mine on for a couple of hours and the lights were still on, etc. so i turned it off as i have been doing. When i turn it off, i end up having to go through setup about every time because it can’t connect to the internet. i have to use my phone to connect because it’s not able to connect to my internet. I. have an extender on because i’ upstairs, all my other internet devices don’t have a problem except the Glowforge. We have fiberoptic service so it’s fast…
Thanks, Robin
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yeah I shut my machine off when I’m done using it, and if there is a risk of a lightning storm I will also unplug the unit just to be safe.
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I unplug mine when I’m done printing (I never use the power switch, I literally just pull the extension cord out of the wall) unless I know I’ll be printing again in a few minutes.
Takes just a couple of minutes to come back online and calibrate if needed.
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Yes, GF HQ pushes updates fairly often and they only get to your machine on startup. Also, we try to save electricity around here.
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Some folks leave theirs on for most of the day. Seems like someone might not even turn it off at night. That being said, it would be worth troubleshooting to figure out why your unit keeps losing the wifi connection. Keeping it on isn’t the best option for energy use (although it draws little in sleep mode) and safety.
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i turn mine off when finished with no setup needed when turned back on.
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ummm…mine stays on for months at a clip 
so ashamed now 
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Given that the power supply fan runs all the time, I turn mine off to extend its life. That being said my power supply died a horrible death and was expensive to get fixed, so what do I know?
I don’t see a benefit to leaving it on, it wastes energy and eats into the MTBF on all the components. If I’m not actively planning to cut something within an hour I turn it off as a rule. The startup time isn’t a deterrent for me.
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I thought it was you who did this, but didn’t want to shame you! Your honesty is edifying!
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I think if you are running a business and use the machine, you’re likely to have it running most of the time and leaving it on makes sense.
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Yeah I’ve had whole days where I was lasing lots of different projects and it’s been on all day, but the norm is that I only cut one thing in a given day, then turn it off.
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As many others, I turn it off after each use. Mainly because it’s loud – even when in power-down mode. I have it plugged into a heavy-duty power strip and use that switch for on/off. This way, I won’t accidentally wear out the built-in switch.
Thanks everyone. i will check on the connectivity issue. I wanted to be sure turning it off wasn’t bad for it:-). Appreciate the responsiveness on these forums!
I’m not sure that’s true. Most electronics suffer more wear (surges, spikes, thermal shock, etc) on startup than on steady state operation. Almost all of my electronics stay on all the time.
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This is what I learned when I was in Army Signal Corps. That said, I do turn mine off when I go to bed; it’s a potential safety issue waiting to happen when I’m sleeping.
Exactly the same for me
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One of my job responsibilities is product reliability. MTBF is a very tricky thing. But generally, properly designed power systems do not suffer from excess stress at power-on. Most of our product reliability testing is focused on operational conditions, we don’t do a lot of power cycles because they’ve been shown to not contribute significantly to unreliability. What tends to accelerate failure is continuous exposure to heat, and power off doesn’t do that. Heat has an exponential effect on unreliability (“Arrhenius Acceleration”). A device rated for 1M hours at 30ºC might only be good for 10K hours at 60ºC.
Also, reliability is a function of duty cycle. A device with a given MTBF at 100% power-on will have 2x the MTBF at 50% power-on.
I turn my GF on when I need to do something. I turn if off when I know I’m not going to need to use it again for a while. I wouldn’t turn it on and off multiple times a day, but I would definitely not leave it on overnight. That’s just needlessly burning-off half of the MTBF of the machine.
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Thank you.
Modern electronics do not have MTTF based on power cycles, especially not 25W solid-state computers…
The power supply’s reliability most definitely includes power cycles. But that’s likely separate from the MTBF. Hard drives have power cycle ratings, too, since stopping and starting the mechanism causes contact and wear, but they have a separate spec for MTBF. And SSDs can have power cycle ratings (which can vary wildly depending on the architecture of the SSD). You’d think an SSD would be more reliable than a HDD, and it is. But an SSD might not have as high an on/off cycle rating than a HDD. A cycle related spec is typically a guaranteed minimum and not a MTBF rating, where MTBF/MTTF/AFR (I prefer AFR - Annualized Failure Rate - because it’s easier to understand, but MTBF and AFR are proportional to each other, they’re the same thing) is a statistical probability of failure.
A power supply rated for a minimum of 5000 cycles should deliver one on/off cycle per day, 365/year, for at least 13.7 years.
A computer board with a 2M hour MTBF has a 0.44% AFR. This means that for every 1000 units in operation, you can expect 4.4 failures per year.
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I don’t disagree with any of this.
The key here is power-cycling the GF is not going to induce failure. The low-power CPU stuff is not the weak link.