I did a P&S post to that effect earlier this week. It would be good for everyone to pile on so the priority is appreciated by Support. I did it in P&S so they’d definitely see it.
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I haven’t had the cool down issue, so I’m not exactly sure what happens.
Does the fan remain on while it’s cooling down? If not, that might help.
Also, if we could manually run the fan, perhaps with the lid open, that may also help to dissipate heat.
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Replying to myself, here: I just saw the discussion on
Manual fan control…
the fan runs at a slow speed, not the full bore of when the air assist is running.
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mine always resumes after cooling down. The wait for the machine to cool can be hours…
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If I understand correctly the over temperature needed to cause a pause is considerably higher than the temperature at which it will resume a print. So the temp would need to be lowered quite a bit. Given that the Basic is a passively cooled system it could take quite a while for relatively warm ambient air to bring down the temp of coolant. The Pro on the other hand has an active chiller that could bring the temp down much, much faster. I am of course assuming that the coolant pump on both is operating all of the time when the power is on? Otherwise it’s not being cooled by anything.
So I guess my question is… Is the pump operating during the cool down process? I’ve never been able to tell when it’s on except during my very first power up when I could see bubbles.
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Pretty sure the liquid cooler is operating continuously from power up. What I am not sure is if they are PWM’ing the pump. Low volume at idle, normal during operation and possibly a higher volume during ‘cool down’.
Edit: In the case of the Basic, What I did notice @ Makerfaire: San Mateo, The external filter was acting like a ‘charge pump’. Since it was pulling more volume of air then the internal fan could push out. It was basically ‘sucking’ the heat out of the unit. The only issue was I don’t believe the thermal limits were active then. As our unit ran with no issues when they killed the HVAC in the area we were in.
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Seems like it should run full bore because the speed of the air being dragged over the heat exchanger will make a huge difference to its efficiency.
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My basic assumption as well. However, I have been able to shut it down for 5 minutes then turn it back on and it would work for another run. That suggests that the temp that alerts on startup is higher then the temp that it will auto-resume at as well which seems counter-intuitive that it would start something new when it wouldn’t finish something it had already started & knew was short in duration (seconds to a minute or so).
One night earlier this week I had to do that multiple times to get a project finished. Kept turning it off & then on to clear the temp alert and proceed with the next step in the job.
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I don’t know what it was like at the Maker Faire, but if Glowforge was indeed tweaking the coolant heat cutoff temperatures for machines demonstrated at shows, that’s kinda unscrupulous. Especially if they weren’t forthright to people before orders were taken.
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I’m not sure I’d got that far. Not many folks are going to be doing GF demos in a tent in 90+ temps. The guidelines are clear (now) as to temps and based on those, they won’t run in that environment and no one should expect them to.
Now how they’re dealing with the new low temp environment requirements vs. the lack of intel on that 2 years ago for most sales is another question. Although, really, you know now before you take delivery. The only lasers I’ve seen work in 90F ambient are ones with beefy external chiller units - no Peltiers, no passive cooling, real honest to goodness refrigeration units.
Part of why I’m going to suck it up and a/c the basement. Mid-80s are not an uncommon temp for me there but with 40% humidity it never bothered me. It bothers the GF though.
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No, you’re right, and I agree with what you’re saying to an extent. I realize tradeshows are strange and magical union-run mob shakedowns not representing typical reality. I get that they’d want to make it work, even if it meant sacrificing a machine or two in the process.
But I see one of two options in that situation:
- Tweak the settings, acknowledge the shortcoming, and be upfront about it.
- Don’t tweak the settings, live with the possible consequences, but avoid any doubt that it’s a true representation of the product.
Tweaking the temps, not revealing they’re tweaked… that’s just morally wrong.
Again, I wasn’t there… I’m not saying it happened, but… there’s been enough discussion about it to make me consider it.
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If they plan on doing roadshows they might. With Makerfaire, you have no control on where they stick your booth.
In addition: The operating temps were not disclosed when the campaign started and even ended. And with the offer with the filter, It was encouraged to take your Glowforge on the road. I think what ended up happening was engineering ultimately dictated that feature set while the ‘use your’forge anyway’ was already penciled in. shrug
They’ll get it figured out.
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Except they’re no longer in Campaign mode, since they’re now officially in “now shipping” mode since June. Any orders now are all net-new, based upon a production design, not a draft prototype.
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Yup. They’ll have to address it.
It was intolerably hot in the booth. If your workshop is this hot, all sort of electronics will have issues (as will you). I was schvitzing something fierce (and I was only in scrubs). Glad I had a roll of paper towels in the booth! IT was well over 90 in the booth per the temperature probe on the Purex. Probably shouldn’t have been running my Macbook Pro either since that’s outside it’s operating temps…
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Not just new orders but anyone accepting the golden email (vs asking for a refund) is now agreeing to the new temp restrictions/guidelines. Whether they look & read them before hitting “accept” is a different story (as evidenced by all the people who thought 12/15 was guaranteed and they can sue now).
Tent people are going to be a small subset of the 10,000. Potentially not insignificant but still a fraction of the customer base. In many cases even there, they’ll be fine but in many they won’t. That’s going to be an issue folks should think about (although there really isn’t an alternative that is reliable for 2+ times the cost of a new GF much less a pre-order price).
The other issue that is still outstanding is international users where the U.S. affinity for a/c is alien to them. Large swathes of the world do not consider 80F hot and wouldn’t even think they’d need to check to see if this thing will run in their temps.
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Trying to find this suit in a large. So far, having no luck.
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Thank you for the feedback – I’ll pass it on!