Leave GF on or shut it down

I only do gifts for family and friends as a hobby so I only work on one project at a time. Sometimes it is a couple of hours between running a piece on the machine because of glue ups or perfecting design or fit. I pull the vent from the window because of temperature but I do not know if it better to leave the machine running or shut it down. Any thoughts out there?

If you are willing to wait the 5-8 minutes for it to start up and calibrate every time I see no problem turning it off, but I also don’t see a reason to turn it off if you think you will use it again that day.

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Thank you for your input

Honestly, I turn mine off any time I’m not going to use it within the next hour. Its not loud, but that constant “on” noise is enough for me to just wait for it to recalibrate every time. But mine never has any problem calibrating and is pretty quick - maybe 2 or 3 min. And I’m still in the room with it during the downtime. I might feel differently if I werent 5 feet away from it.

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Usually don’t turn it off if it’s going to be used the rest of the day. It is downstairs in a full size basement studio. Because I can’t hear it, have forgotten to turn it off for a couple days.

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If you really are waiting 5 to 8 minutes and this is not hyperbole you should contact support. I’m up in about 2.

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Thank You

Thank you

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It may be 2 minutes until it connects, but I notice that if I pay attention to the GFUI during that time I get a lot of “unable to calibrate” and “Calibrating” messages. So I generally just wait 5-8 minutes for everything to settle out. After that, it works well and I don’t seem to have the constant problems that everyone else seems to be reporting.

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It’s an embedded device, so it’s designed to be turned off and on - you aren’t hurting it. I usually leave mine on if I know I will be using it within a few hours, but mine is in a room I’m usually not near so the noise won’t bother me.

I second that, I’m somewhere around the two minutes also and I have terrible WiFi in my Garage. Yet I haven’t got any drop in signal. Only when my online backup kicks in it takes all the bandwidth available. It’s been a month and i still haven t been able to finish uploading all my files but that’s another story.

@ben1 I recomend check with support about your calibration time.

Living in florida and having the unit near a window (obviously) I did have an instance where I did some cutting and then left the unit idling for perhaps an hour or two and noticed that the button was glowing orange which I believe is the “help I need to cool down” indicator. Since the fans are not really running hard enough when idle to clear out the internal air, I think that the warmth in the room and the filtered sun coming through the window warmed it up inside.

I generally start it up when I need to cut and if I am sure I’m done for the day (or at least don’t plan to cut anything for hours) I will turn it back off. My startup is generally just a few minutes and isn’t burdensome to wait through.

I turn my off as the always on noise interrupts sleep as its in my room to vent outside right now (until I get the filter or summer where it wont freeze next to the car).

I am figuring the collaboration errors I been getting are infact more from the errors in the cloud than with the GF unit. Times I have had issue is during peak usage times.

Some leave theirs on for days. Some shut down between every job. I don’t think there’s any official guidance. If it gets particularly hot or cold it will simply notify you and it won’t cut. Personally, the longest I’ve left mine on is maybe 24 hours.

Mine stays on all the time.

I will do a reboot about once a week to allow any firmware updates to be applied. Normally (with the power off), I move the print head under the lid camera before turning it back on.

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I haven’t timed my startup with a stopwatch. I have a process where I turn on the laser, I set up the venting, and then I ignore it for somewhere between 5 and 8 minutes. The laser does things during this time. I don’t watch it. Once it has stopped doing things, I load the app.
I have developed this process because when I watched the app there were a lot of calibration messages and it seemed to take forever. This was especially true when I first received it. So I stopped watching. I don’t have problems with the app, I don’t get recalibration messages on the app, my files load, etc. so unless there is something that points to an actual problem with the laser, I am not going to bother support. Based on their response time from my last actual problem they are overworked and understaffed.

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"A watched pot never boils. "

:upside_down_face:

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I did yesterday, it was 3 seconds short of 2 minutes. If I recall, when I measured the power at idle it was right at 40w, so not a big power suck.
I generally turn it off if it will be more than an hour, no need to put the run time on the lights and pump, plus I like the assurance of a fresh calibration.

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I timed it this morning - mine is down to about 2 minutes now also. I suspect the changes over time have reduced it. During the first several weeks I think there were a lot of firmware upgrades to be done.

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I usually shut mine down before bed so I can close up the exterior vent. Otherwise, if I cut something earlier in the day I just leave it on.