I think they would be on a much more safe legal footing warning people to guard against condensation coming down the vent than not mentioning it. Especially as it is now documented here they are aware it can be a problem. If somebody destroyed their machine operating it in the specified environment with the supplied vent hose I think GF would be on a sticky wicket saying it was the user’s fault.
Most product manuals these days warn about doing completely stupid things whereas this is not an obvious problem and could easily catch people out.
thanks, this sums up my feelings better than i was saying, i think.
like i said, i’m not trying to say you should be able to operate this laser in a pool house. i just think the company’s treatment of the matter is strange.
You can’t expect consumers to know there’s going to be a specific venting setup required for their environment.
At the same time the company can’t investigate every single possibility out there BUT, there is a whole region of the Southeast US in a nasty humidity belt where this is going to be a recurring problem.
Right now, there is absolutely no suggestion of vent placement in the manual. Nada. There was a comment in the forums from dan about it but who’s gonna know to research here to find it. There’s lots of photos here of users installs some of them OK, some only OK for certain environments, some that frankly should be avoided completely.
It would not be disastrous for the company to make venting suggestions based on simple physics.
The vent outlet at the exterior should be lower than the exhaust output on the machine. This will avoid so many problems that if people followed it, there likely would be no need for other recommendations.
Since #1 is not always possible, be sure you have enough exhaust venting that you can turn it downward to the floor immediately after exiting the machine, before it routes uphill to the outlet. This creates a trap in the vent and will stop lots of things from working back into the machine (like sinking moisture in the air)
Remember that while cold air drops, heat (outdoors) rises and will suck cold interior air out through the vent while the unit is turned off. Air is always free to flow through the glowforge. This is the best reason for blast gates or using a removable vent, electricity costs money.
I think all this really needs from Glowforge is an update to their installation instructions to guard against an inflow of too cold/moist air back into the machine. They obviously support venting to outside, they provide the vent with every Glowforge after all. This was just a small oversight into what to warn people to watch out for, "So you will either need a way to keep air from coming into the Glowforge from outside when not in use, or disconnect your venting to the outside when not in use.
The problem several of us seem to have was @dan’s quick response to say the set up is not supported, it’s the very set up Glowforge has recommended from day one. No where has Glowforge said that this setup may not work in certain environments. Yes, it makes sense that some areas (like Florida, or the very cold north) will require special consideration and I don’t think anyone is upset that Glowforge hasn’t thought through every situation or even thinks that they should, but a simple warning that an external vent (which they recommend) needs to be guarded against air flow back into the machine would take care of everybody’s issues. And like others, I think that should be front and center in the manual, and not relegated to “Beyond the Manual” in the forum. It’s basic requirements for the machine to operate, not some far flung special circumstance.
Oh, sorry…gators. I visited my older brother a couple of years ago just outside of New Orleans and all of the kids wanted to see some gators. We went and bought some of those large marshmallows, stopped on the side of a highway with a waterway beside it, threw the marshmallows in and watched the gators fight over them. It was quite funny.
I thought 4 sure you meant bears…I’ve never heard of a gator eating marshmallows. (Of course, never offered one either…you learn something new every day!)
Just googled “Palmetto Bug”. Terrible. My girls would never sleep again, if I show them those pictures. They are afraid of even little spiders, and the spiders that are indigenous in northern Germany are really small. But I have to admit that the idea of an insect that you can hear walking makes even me shudder.
I heard one at night in the bedroom a couple of weeks ago. Got up turned on the lights (because the clicking is creepy) searched the room…couldn’t find it. Got back in bed, heard it again…rinse, lather, repeat about half a dozen times.
Finally fell asleep.
Next weekend, was taking the sheets out of the dryer, and found the remains in the lint trap. (He’d been sharing a bed with me for about 3 days. Ulp!)
