Over the last few days, I have experienced stopped prints repeatedly due to error message “Sorry - it got too hot for printing”. The button glows yellow whenever this happens, and always says “Print Stopped”. I have raised the Glowforge up and placed a fan in front of it to improve airflow, and cleaned the exhaust fan of dust and debris. After letting it cool overnight, I experience this same issue within 10 minutes of a print. I have had others indicate that there are sensors inside the machine on the left side behind the exhaust fan that can become caked in dust and register false temperatures. The ambient temp outside is 70 degrees and cloudy, my house is set to 68 degrees. The Glowforge isn’t even close to warm to the touch anywhere on the machine, the room is cool, there is good ventilation under and behind, no sunlight is hitting the machine, and the print fails very quickly. After the print stops, it says “too hot for printing”, buffers and says “cooling”, then it says “Focusing the head of your Glowforge” and buffers while “focusing” without ever actually focusing. It has yet to continue to print after this malfunction.
The area around the circuit board and coolant reservoir are pretty dusty still, but the exhaust fan has been cleared of debris. The radiator and fan under the right side appear to be quite clean apart from minimal dust. I have attached an image of the circuit board area.
If there is anything that can be done to remedy this as soon as possible, I’d be very appreciative. I am very much in need of my machine for a product drop this Friday.
The Glowforge is particularly sensitive to excess heat. Some laser makers run at higher heats but it cuts the life of the laser considerably when that is done. For this reason it is a good thing to operate the laser with the room below 75degrees.
Thanks so much, but I keep my air conditioning at 68 degrees! It is about 70 degrees outside. It shouldn’t be too hot for the Glowforge, and also the machine hasn’t been running for very long at all every time this has happened
If not the actual heat than it is likely either the sensor or the path from sensor to mainboard. A bad connection from the white cable to the head is one of the easiest to fix, also the three pins that rest on the three plates in the back with the head removed need to be making a good connection as well.
How about just getting a can of compressed air and giving the cooling fins. etc a good blast to remove any deposits of dirt / dust that may be acting as an insulator?
Stick a shop vac hose in there while your doing this to prevent filling the room up with dust!
while cleaning the fans, lens, etc, I discovered that the wiring to the fan on the printer head was rubbing against the metal arm that the printer head and tube are attached to. Both the hot and ground wire have markings from rubbing on the arm. The hot wire seems to have rubbed through and grounded out to the metal, burning the insulation. I have a feeling that because the hot wire has been making an exposed connection to the metal that no power is reaching the fan itself, causing the overheating issue. I have attached pictures showing the issue. Is there a way to get a new fan for the print head? I could rewire the one wire but don’t want to void any warranty.
The print head fan doesn’t cool anything, it just provides a curtain of air to keep the smoke/debris from laser cutting from going straight up into the lens bore. It’s blowing into the empty space below the lens. So while you may have an issue with the print head, I doubt that’s causing the cooling error.
Since you’re looking for rubbed wiring, look at the wires going to the temperature sensor over by the coolant tank. Sometimes that bundle of wires gets rubbed by the laser arm’s drag chain as it moves forward and back. That has caused erroneous “too hot” conditions for other owners in the past.
Hello! @kierra.boyd It looks like we have been working with you through an email ticket. Opening a forum post in this section opens up a ticket as well so I will go ahead and close this thread to mitigate any confusion. I’ve already sent a new reply to your email with the next steps. I look forward to hearing back from you by email. Thank you!
