Intermittent Pausing During Cutting

Wondering if anyone else experienced their glowforge pause intermittently during a print (repeatedly at odd intervals for odd durations of time) ? When it pauses for me, the fans stay on at full blast the laser head stops moving and stops cutting, the app appears to loose connection but stays on the printing screen and pauses the print clock a few seconds after the machine pauses. So the time is now off (the app will say its done but the printer will continue cutting until it is really done) . Once the machine appears to catch up with whatever it thought of, it rewinds one or two g-step codes and continues cutting. I suspect wifi? But the signal strength is really good where I have my forge so I have no idea where to start. Anyone else experience this issue? Any tips to troubleshoot? I see no way to check wifi signal for my forge, maybe this can be a feature request for the software team to show your connection strength?

This is typically a temperature thing. The pauses are waiting for cool down.

If you want to check your wifi strength, I’d say that the most accurate way would be to log into your router interface and check the signal strength there.

However, the jobs are downloaded in one get-go (no streaming, chunks, etc. at this time), so I wouldn’t attribute a slow down to that. The job isn’t network dependent by the time that it starts.

The head will often pause momentarily if you have different focus heights specified for different operations.

And I’m not sure where they are at on pause/resume to cool the tube, since I only ran into that one on the day of delivery (coming off a 100+ degree truck). Do you have a basic? What temps are you operating in?

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Interesting. The focus motor seems very slow when it is homing and you are saying it is also slow changing focus during a job. I wonder how continuously variable focus is going to work. It would need to move pretty fast for that.

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I have the basic. Using proof grade medium draft board on auto settings. So there should be no focal changes. Room temp is between 75 and 80f.

Maybe a temp Gauge on the app would be the feature request. Lol.

The July 2017 update was unclear as to whether pause-when-warm was implemented or “coming soon”. https://glowforge.com/latest-improvements/some-like-it-hot does not have a date but says it is implemented. It also mentions 72F as the point where you may start having trouble with a Basic model. The manual says printing over 75F may cause pauses or failures.

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Yep, I think he is running into temp issues…
On a side note, looks like the GF cuts fine at 49F (workshop was a bit chilly the other day, most of the time in low 50s right now)

Don’t know if you had a temperature issue or a software glitch.

I had similar issues last night I chalked up to the glitch camp as there was no indication it was cooling, it did not restart the first time after most of an hour, room temp was 68F and it worked fine when I restarted the job (after turning off parts already done). It happened several times for me last night.

But it’s a PRU so no idea if it’s something else altogether. I do know mine is able to alert to temperature issues and to pause & restart because it has done that before when it was warmer.

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Based on all of the replies, it would appear to be a Temperature issue but there is no way to know for sure. Nothing is displayed on the app to indicate any issue. This should be a feature request but I haven’t heard from the GF team to know for sure.

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Your Glowforge Basic features a closed-loop liquid cooling system that uses the air from the room to remove heat. It is designed to be used between 60 degrees Fahrenheit (16 Celsius) and 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 Celsius). Learn more about the operating environment here. Printing outside these ranges may cause your unit to pause before starting, or to pause periodically during the print for cooling. This isn’t harmful, but it can make your print take a little longer.

You can try any of these things to improve warm-weather performance:

  • Try printing with no material on the bed (so as not to generate smoke and fumes) and no exhaust hose attached. If this works, then the problem may be that your exhaust hose is constricting the flow of air out of the unit, preventing cooling.

  • Examine the bottom-right side of your Glowforge. There are air intake vents, and if they become obstructed, it could make cooling less effective.

  • Try pointing a fan at the right side of your Glowforge. If there is warm air around the intake, this could help it cool off.

  • Power off your Glowforge and allow it to cool, then power it on and print immediately. When it sits idle, the fans are off, so heat can build up.

  • Just wait. Your print may take a little longer when it’s warm, but your Glowforge will protect itself and make sure it cools enough to prevent any loss of power or damage. And it’s clever enough to pick up from exactly where it left off, even if it loses Wi-Fi during the print!

Thanks for the suggestion, as well. I’ll make sure the team gets it!