Interface Project Timer Error

I was engraving and cutting an item just now. It had a total time of 1 hour and 1 minute when I started it. After the engraving was completed, it was around 22 minutes left. While I was doing the project, my computer screen did go dark a few times, but when I checked the time when it was on it’s last few cuts, I noticed the timer now said 45 minutes again. It finished when it was supposed to, but the timer continued as if the GF was still running. I had to cancel the job and then it was stuck on cancelling.
I’m going to shut turn it off and close my browser and start over to see if that works. I have no idea why it would have changed the timer during the project.

1 Like

The “timer” is just an estimate and runs on your local machine. There is no communication between them unlesss there is an issue or you pause the job. If your machine goes into sleep mode or similar, then the timer will no longer be in sync with the machine.

1 Like

How is my machine going into sleep mode while doing a job? I understand it’s an estimate, but I don’t understand why it would go from saying something around 22 minutes, and then at the end of the same job, how would it then go back to a longer time. I took the screen shot after I noticed the timer had gone back up and there was only one cut left.

1 Like

I ran a job yesterday where I stopped and cancelled the thing several times until I was satisfied with all my settings. I noticed after I finally hit print for the last time that the machine was telling me the job was completed when I still had over 36 minutes on the project and the timer was still counting down.
It still did the job successfully. Just a quirk in the program I guess.

1 Like

Well, hopefully posting about this small bug here will get it noticed and fixed. I’m glad it doesn’t mess with my project, but it is a bit annoying.

2 Likes

The machine they’re referring to here is your computer (“my computer screen did go dark a few times”) not the :glowforge: :slight_smile:

1 Like

Ahh - thank you for the clarification.
It had never done that before when my computer screen would black out, so I was unsure if that would be the cause or not. The first two times I re-checked the timer it lagged a little but went back to an expected estimated time. My shock was definitely just from checking after 22ish minutes left, then to the jump to 48minutes (when I was expecting to see less than a minute or 2).

1 Like

Thanks for letting us know about this! You’ve provided great details here, and I’m going to pass them along to the team. As @o-o pointed out earlier in the thread, the Glowforge app does not maintain a direct connection to your printer, so there are a few different reasons this time might go “out of sync,” especially if the print pauses, or if your Glowforge loses its Wi-Fi connecting during the print. Losing the Wi-Fi connection can also cause the “Cancelling” message to appear “stuck” in the app longer than expected, until the printer comes back online and the app updates.

I checked out some details from your machine logs just to investigate whether this might be the case. In these logs we have a record of the average signal strength the Glowforge is capturing from the network it’s connected to. On average, this signal strength has been low over the last week, with average strength at around -81dBm as of today. For more context, on networks with very good signal strength, this will often run closer to -30dBm. A signal strength at -70dBm or lower would be very difficult to stay connected to.

I’m letting the team know about the timer sync issues regardless, but I think you might see improved performance by checking a few things to improve your Glowforge Wi-Fi connection! Some common troubleshooting steps can be found here. Since your Glowforge only uses the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi frequency to connect, there’s one setting you can change that often makes a big difference: the network channel. You can find the instructions for changing the network channel by consulting your gateway or router manual. It’s a good bet to try channel 1, 6, or 11 to achieve the most stable connection, but it can take some trial and error to find the best results.

I hope this improves things. Please open a new thread if you run into any other trouble - we’ll be here to help!

1 Like