We’d love some help. Can someone print 10 3" pins on wood for us? Our high school robotics team has a year end get together and the team has designed a pin for each graduating senior and the Glowforge is on the blink.
When I turn on the Glowforge, it’s stuck at “Homing”. I have followed the steps from Stuck Calibrating – Glowforge, pushed all the 5 pins and powered the Glowforge. No change, just starts up, I hear a click -click sound and then nothing. Print head does not move.
Support was helpful. I took out the carriage plate and it was filthy. The fan was full of dried wood crud. Everything’s clean, no cracks, looks good. Put everything back. Same thing, stuck on “centering” and ends up with “Head not found”.
Glowforge has given us the option of buying a refurbished laser cutter for about $1000. We had been loaned this Glowforge - we are a robotics club at a public high school and can’t afford it.
What are your plans for the GF? If you could raise the $1000 would you be able to get it fixed or would the original owner who lent it to you want it back?
I am following up with the original owner to see what our options are. I’m guessing if he’s ok with us replacing the GF, we would love to keep it (if we can raise the money).
In the meantime, if anyone has any ideas to try, I’m happy to! I spent an hour cleaning the fan in the print head (already cleaned out the fan on the carriage plate) - they were both cruddy. But, didn’t change anything, sadly.
I"m having the same problem! Stuck on centering, homing and scanning depending on how far it makes it in the process. I’ve tried everything suggested, and still nothing. Email to support. Hopefully they will respond quickly.
If you get to keep it after it’s fixed but can’t raise the money, drop me a note. I think it’s important to support robotics and other maker oriented programs for kids
I was not able to access the Google Drive to see the file, but since it is Thursday I doubt I could get anything to Washington by Saturday even if I had the file and material.
@cald5924 & @slcunique
Only the original person is helped in a thread - if you’re having your own issues you should either send an email to support@glowforge.comor create your own post in P&S.
This Drive isn’t accessible - can you open it to “anyone with the link”. We do have users in WA (including the main offices). There’s always a chance @dan could help out, but you can check out this map and see if you can tag individuals who are close to you!
Thank you for the offer. I will follow up if/when we get to that decision. Just a side note, our robotics team used to build their competition robots out of wood until a couple of years. But, the team wants to keep its history and look and feel by continuing to design the pits, pins in laser cuts on wood.
Update: A friend who has a GF has offered for me to get these printed tomorrow. GF Support looked through the logs and determined that the Glowforge has an issue with its power system. If anyone has come across this before and has suggestions, I’m happy to take apart (and put back!) subunits to get to the bottom of this. Besides, the high school robotics team members get lessons in repair and maintenance! And thank you all for help!
@deirdrebeth haha, I have done a bit of taking apart, that’s true! The two parts that I have the most familiarity with are the board that the lid’s black ribbon cable connects to at the back of the machine, and the one that the white ribbon cable connects to on the left hand side. I had a similar issue where mine would be stuck “centering”, which was resolved by fixing the board that the black ribbon cable connects to. I did a write-up on that here: Black Ribbon Circuit Board - Replacement Guide
I’d suggest that you try to visually check to see if this board has any sort of obvious damage, such as black burn marks or corrosion. The way the machine knows where to send the laser head, is during the startup, the head is sent to the rough center of the machine, the camera then takes a picture to find the head, and adjusts it until it is centered. From there it “homes” it. If it cannot understand where the head is, then it gets tripped up. This information is all gathered originally through the black ribbon cable (which could also be the problem), sent through that connection board, and then through a separate white cable into the main board on the right side of the machine. Anyway, the visual inspection is where I would start. The part and shipping is much more cost effective than ordering a replacement machine, but you’d have to be able to diagnose the problem correctly.
I found corrosion on my board only after ordering a black ribbon cable replacement and the problem still being present. Had I done a bit more poking around, my problem would have been more obvious.
