on the contrary, i think a good sleep mode would change it a bit - you could go to the UI from your computer or mobile device, when you do the servers ping your laser and wake it up, and by the time you get over to it, it’s calibrated and blinking, ready to cut your design.
5 Likes
Considering it only takes about 2 minutes to calibrate, and restarting assures its accuracy I usually turn it off if I anticipate more than say 20 minutes before I’m ready to print again. No need for it to sit there humming doing nothing for extended periods.
I waited a year and a half for one of these - I’m not that impatient (anymore 
).
14 Likes
i’m not talking about being impatient, merely user-friendly design. the switch is in an awkward position depending on how you store the laser, for example, and i don’t necessarily like using power bars as power switches for devices. a good sleep or generally app-controlled boot / wake button would be nice.
especially then you could schedule reboots to mitigate the compounding bug before it gets fixed.
3 Likes
I shut mine down if I know I’m not going to be printing anything more that day, or if the noise would interfere with something else in the room where it currently is. The fan is kinda loud even when not doing anything. Any idea on idle power consumption?
3 Likes
Same SOP. I fired it up at the beginning of the day and shut it down at the end. Via ‘Alexa, Turn on the Glowforge’ & ‘Alexa, Turn off the Glowforge’. Start to cut is about 2~5 mins. Which is about the time it takes for either me or my wife to sit down and fire up the app of choice.
I would leave it running if there was a time out/idle for the lid LEDs ( i.e. 15~20 mins with a WOL like function via the UI). At night the unit completely illuminates the office and the hallway and shines in under the door of our bedroom. (I know first world problems.)
13 Likes
4 Likes
The mysterious glowing creature in the locked room…
3 Likes
I hope we get to see your “heart of tafitti”. It sounds like you are having lots of fun with your kids and the glowforge!
1 Like
Well, since you asked…
And yes, my kids and I are having a blast with our 
!
2 Likes
I am in the 20 minutes or more group of turning it off. It helps having Alexa do it.
Or right now lots of on and off since it seems they are doing more updating heh. Updates like daily now around the 3 pm mark.
2 Likes
Not an official recommendation, but we leave it on during the day and turn it off at night.
13 Likes
do you always use the switch on the unit itself, or do you turn off a rack / ups / power strip / app-controlled outlet, etc?
2 Likes
The switch.
4 Likes
@dan, some equipment (like our xerox color copier) actually runs through a shut down sequence when shut off with the switch, and it’s preferable to turn the machine off through the switch. other equipment is 6 of one, half dozen of the other because either way it’s just a switch closing the power circuit. does the GF run any kind of shut down sequence when you turn it off from the switch?
2 Likes
The switch in the rear is a ‘hard’ switch not a ‘soft’ switch. So powering off via this switch just kills the mains directly.
3 Likes
No shutdown sequence! The firmware folks saved me a lot of work on that one.
20 Likes
I use a WeMo to turn it on and off because reaching to the back is not optimal. Has Glowforge gotten to test with one to make sure they don’t do nothing weird?
Voice control, it is the future!
1 Like
i like this idea. connect to a wemo, and a command to alexa… “alexa, turn off glowforge.”
2 Likes
That is exactly what I do. Of course Alexa is still learning an odd word like Glowforge so she has heard ‘glow farge’ and ‘glow flirt’ and ‘ball farce’ but I think she is getting it pretty accurate now.
6 Likes
that’s my plan. Just set up my outdoor outlet from iDevices to turn on and off My wife’s water fountain in the garden yesterday.
2 Likes