Please advise on this matter… The glass lid has completely separated from the metal/plastic hinges on the back side of the laser. It’s very disappointing to know that a machine of this caliper and price is merely connected with glue and a crappy glue job to begin with. It seems a little crazy that GF would consider this type of connection since the lid is probably the most used part of the laser. Opening and closing over and over. I started to notice the lid was becoming looser every time I opened it. Being a little weary of this, I never fully opened the lid all the way. Here are some photos of the hinges and lid where you can see the dried glue. I’m still researching the best way to move forward on this, since it is halting production. Any advice from fellow Glowforgers is welcome.
If it’s still under warranty they will want you to send it back for warranty replacement. If it’s not under warranty I believe a few people have had good luck cleaning the old glue off and regluing.
Welcome and sorry your first post is about such a problem. Thanks for posting such clear pictures of the problem, especially the glue issue.
If you haven’t sent an email to support, just hang out here. They’ll come around and take care of you. If you sent an email, them come and close this and take it offline anyway.
The critical part is the cleaning. Fortunately yours came all the way off exposing the full glue footprint. People who try to clean off partially unglued sections & squeeze glue in have had subsequent failures.
I’d use a razor blade/utility knife blade to scrape all that glue off. Then wipe it down with denatured alcohol until you’re sure you’ve got nothing but glass.
Do the same for any glue remnants on the hinge.
Cover the GF sides, electronics & mechanicals (gantry, etc) with towels or something to keep any denatured alcohol from dripping into anything inside since you don’t want any liquids reaching your electrical connections.
Then use either an epoxy or E6000 to glue it. Make sure you get the hinge as close to the original position as possible. Then clamp or weight it if you can - it’ll be hard to do that with the hinge since you can’t get around it to clamp but if you bring the gantry forward and put in some kind of spacers that reach to the bottom of the glass maybe you can get a firm surface that when you add weights on top you won’t get deflection. Leave it for the full cure period specified by the adhesive.
Then you’re going to want to run the calibration routine to get the machine reset to the slightly new camera position.
I feel your pain. This should not happen for sure. The fact that the lid detached is not the fault of the method chosen to attach it though. It is more as result of that particular bonding job. High tech adhesives are a very effective way to join parts in assemblies.
Your unit looks like it could have benefitted from a better distribution of adhesive.
Clean the parts really well and make sure your alignment is good. The clamping and cure time of the adhesive are important, but prep is most important!
I had the exact same thing happen with the front piece. I elected to use 2 part epoxy instead of just adhesive as it is better for glass adhesion. Judging by the small amount of factory epoxy that was there, I’m not surprised it had eventually come loose. If you elect to glue it yourself, just be sure you clean offf the old glue and wipe down the glass well to be sure there are not any oils from your hands.
I’m sorry that the lid of your Glowforge has detached from the unit. Unfortunately, this is an issue that we can’t resolve remotely. I want you to have a reliable unit, so I’ll be in touch via email to sort out the details. I’m so sorry about the bad news.
