A single-strand wire of that diameter would be very difficult to work with. If I were making this machine I would be using a high-strand count flex cable with 1 kV insulation or better.
It’s almost certainly a single-conductor cable, I would guess 12AWG or larger. I can’t see the voltage rating though.
Yeah I meant a single conductor braided cable, not a solid core wire. That would be unruly.
I don’t know why some people are getting their panties in a knot but I value any input you have. We are all going to encounter issues at some point and you seem to be the only guy who has torn these things down to the core. Like some others here I avoid facebook so I would sure like to see you post what ever you have on here.
He did the research and found a solution. Is that not worth anything?
I’m not sure the issue is relative worth, I think it’s a matter of the norms around advertisement on the forum. It’s generally frowned upon, though in this case personally I didn’t think it was out of line. (and I am very much anti-advertising)
But if we’re talking about worth here…
A potential solution. To a potential problem.
There’s not enough data to know how likely this is to happen to anyone, nor can we be sure that this will prevent the wire from failing.
It’s not clear if there’s a widespread problem[1] or if there was a batch of faulty wires, or if every wire batch has some small amount of defects that can cause this… so when deciding how much value to put on a fix for this problem, you sort of need to consider how likely it is to actually happen.
If the problem is abrasion, then sure, a tough sleeve might protect against that. If the problem is insulation failure (my leading theory) then what you need is better insulation, and a sleeve might provide that.
If it’s a near certainty that you’ll have this issue, then sure $89 seems like a good investment. If it’s a very small chance? That’s much less clear.
Also… if you have a power supply failure and you spot an arc in your red wire, just cut the offending wire segment out and solder in a replacement. It’d cost you pennies. Maybe not for the faint of heart, but if you’re the sort that wants to do this I’d imagine some soldering is in your skillset.
40 machines, and roughly 50000 Glowforges out there, that’s less than a tenth of a percent. So a bit less than 1 in one thousand chance it might happen to you. Even if we assume there are twice as many than that, it’s still 1/500 chance. Pretty unlikely, all things considered. ↩︎
… and looks like deleted got suspended. That’s too bad. I wonder what happened?
Well I agree, but the point is he is offering a “potential” solution to anyone who doesn’t want to have to source the material or figure out the details themselves. From the write up by the seller it includes a few other things as well and an offer of additional help if required. This all has value imo.
Too bad he got suspended. That’s not right.
Hard to say, since we don’t know why. It takes a lot to get banned here.
Then don’t buy it. Geez, you guys really know how to make this place feel unwelcoming. Would you please stop chasing decent people off the forum?
I don’t plan to buy it, and I don’t think it is an adequate solution either, based on the information provided.
I don’t really care if I come across as unwelcoming in this type of situation. If someone wants to present a problem in detail and a solution that is proven to work and wants to sell that solution for a price that is reasonable I will back it up, no problem. However, if I see a solution that my experience and knowledge says is not sufficiently tested or is outright snake oil, I am going to call that out. If people see it as unwelcoming, so be it.
If more data is provided showing that this solution is the proper and tested solution, great. But even though Glowforge is doing something similar it doesn’t mean to me that it is tested enough to justify that price tag. Back it up with data, technical specifications I can check and look up.
I wonder if possibly it is a requested suspension?
If not, I can see all kinds of legal areas for a suspension:
Thanks for the location Jon.
I don’t know for sure what kind of wire is inside the insulation, but the red wire is very flexible and floppy.
That means it is a high strand count flex wire, probably with silicone insulation. If it were only a few strands as mentioned above it would be stiffer.
To me this points further toward an assembly error more than a material defect, though it may be that the insulation is rated a little lower than it needs to be based on the current, voltage, and neighboring ground paths. It may be that the wire gets pulled against a grounded surface with enough force to compress the insulation in that area, which allows an arc to develop and defeat the insulation because it’s thinner than it would be without being under compression. If this is the case, a sleeve in the contact area would reduce or prevent the compression and would likely solve the issue.
If the wire isn’t compressed at the deterioration point, it’s either internal breakage of strands or being too close to a grounded part with insufficient insulation to counter the difference in electrical potential.
The only place I can see that it would get compressed is where it runs across the underside of the machine with a bundle of other wires, and an aluminum strip is screwed down over them. Once it comes up on the other side, it goes through the cable chain and back across under the tube, to fasten to the other end of the tube. It pulls easily through those sections, so I don’t think any compression is happening there.
That points to internal strand breakage to me. I wonder if we removed the insulation from one of those photographed cables what we would find.
Actually no. An early buyer here pulled the machine to bits and documented it while hosting a forum for others doing the same. His objective was to try to remove the dependence on the GF mothership with an open source solution. All parts were identified and documented where possible with part numbers & manufacturers as well.
You can find it all here.
Scott did give up on trying to find a way to untether the machine but he did a huge amount of work documenting things.
Yes you’re right. I have read everything on his site but Jon was current.
jon has good knowledge and has done a lot of good things. but for some reason, he can sometimes be a little offputting in how he delivers it. and now, fair or unfair, negative comments get perceived as personal attacks. maybe some people push him too hard, but the issue goes both ways. on some level, i feel some comparison between cpalmer in jon. a little polarizing at times.
fwiw, imnsvho, what made the thread awkward initially was the attempt to push for people to go to facebook for the info instead of sharing all of it here.