I am at a complete loss on what to do. I reached out with an urgent request for technical assistance regarding a persistent issue with my Glowforge machine’s onboard camera. This issue has been ongoing for weeks and is now severely impacting my business operations.
The camera has been working intermittently despite my efforts to troubleshoot. I cleaned the contacts, but the inconsistency persisted. Based on the websites advice, I purchased the black lid cable, though I hesitated to replace it right away when the camera began functioning more consistently. However, the camera has now stopped working entirely. I have already sent pictures and a video documenting the problem and the response i got was ask the community because “We are currently experiencing longer than normal wait times, but will be in touch with you as soon as possible.
In the meantime, many solutions can be found at [support.glowforge.com] or on our community forum.” this kind of response is not what i was hoping for from the tech support from the Glowforge Team.
Welcome to the forum. Not the way you would hope to start sharing with our community, I’m sure. I recently had the same issue with my own Glowforge. Their response and your photos showing all the connections are pretty common and yes, unfortunately, they are very busy. They will get back to you, it just may take longer than you like.
The only things I can suggest are things that they’ve already suggested…including changing out the black lid cable and / or the camera lid cable…which may or may not solve the problem while you wait for them to get back to you.
This is my personal opinion, but cables don’t just “go bad”… My first GF lasted many years until the tube finally gave out. I never touched the cables or connectors, because as an electronics engineer, it was obvious to me they are not designed to be handled. I never did any kind of “deep clean” that people think is necessary or can fix things. I cleaned the optics regularly, because the intensity of the beam can “bake” debris onto the surfaces. I wiped down the rails, and the lid camera. Period. I removed, brushed down, and shook out the crumb tray - and wiped up any debris in the bottom of the machine.
yea, that’s the message i was getting when it would work intermittently. I used to just refresh or turn the machine on and off an then it would work. After buying the cable it started to work more frequently (without me even replacing the old one). Then it just stopped and i quickly changed the cable and still nothing.
Same line of thinking. I clean the things that obviously needed to be cleaned. especially the camera lens (particularly after wood cuts/engraves) but the machine seems pretty dead now. I am not even getting the error about the camera not coming up anymore. there’s just no response. how did you discern that your tube gave out?
I had to increase the power or slow down the cut speed over time, it took a couple of years for it to finally get to the point where it was completely unreliable. I had my machine from close to the start, so it wasn’t unexpected. I do wish it was made clearer, but these CO2 tubes are not “lifetime” products.
