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?
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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.)
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The mysterious glowing creature in the locked room…
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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!
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Well, since you asked…
And yes, my kids and I are having a blast with our 
!
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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.
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Not an official recommendation, but we leave it on during the day and turn it off at night.
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do you always use the switch on the unit itself, or do you turn off a rack / ups / power strip / app-controlled outlet, etc?
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The switch.
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@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?
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The switch in the rear is a ‘hard’ switch not a ‘soft’ switch. So powering off via this switch just kills the mains directly.
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No shutdown sequence! The firmware folks saved me a lot of work on that one.
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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!
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i like this idea. connect to a wemo, and a command to alexa… “alexa, turn off glowforge.”
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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.
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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.
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Perhaps we will then evolve to not have arms.
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y’all’re more trustworthy than i am; i wouldn’t connect the laser to voice control simply to avoid accidentally turning it off in the middle of a cut.
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At least there isn’t voice control for setting and the Big Button. “Alexa, set power to 100 and inches per minute to 1. Alexa, start print.”
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