I read in the draft manual that the Glowforge should be operated in an environment that is less that 75 degrees F. That seems very low as an upper threshold. I set the thermostat in my house at 77 degrees. Is this an accurate statement in the manual?
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I think it suggests thatâs the best operating temperature, rather than the necessary upper limit.
John
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Itâs not affecting the pre-release unit hereâŚitâs generally a degree or two warmer than that. The Basic might just pause more frequently to cool down in warmer environments. I donât think any of the testers have actually seen it happen though, so canât say.
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Thanks, I feel a little better.
I know that when it is too warm, the GFUI will tell you it is too warm.
Since it is monitoring temperatures, I would assume that you will also get a âtoo cold/not warm enoughâ notification. Worse case would be that you would need to let it warm up (or put a space heater in the room for 10 to 15 minutes).
Once it is warmer, then turn off the space heat (especially if it is on the same circuit as your GF 
- which pulls 6.5 to 9 Amps of power at 100 to 120 Volts).
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The lair stays 80-82 all summer as it is the warmest room in the house, works great.
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The July Update under âPause When Warmâ talks about how the unit operates now and how it will soon operate. It will pause when it is operating too warm and resume after it cools down. Currently it just powers through with the potential for a degraded cut. None of the Pre-Release units have as yet experienced a temperature related problem. Thatâs not to say the Production units will operate at the same temperatures as the Pre-Release units. We just donât know.
Continuing the discussion from July 2017 Update (latest):
Pause when warm
"Another feature thatâs coming soon is the ability for your Glowforge to pause when itâs over temperature. Today, when your Glowforge is operating in a room thatâs too warm, it just keeps going - even though cut and engrave quality may suffer. Thermal pause extends the lifetime of your tube by letting it cool down when the room itâs operating in is too warm, and ensures that long prints in a warm environment look as good at the end of the print as they did at the start. Itâs pretty neat - the print just pauses for a minute (or more if itâs hot in the room), then resumes right where it left off. The improved cooling system on the Pro works with the feature so it can operate in a warmer room and pause less, too."
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Yes, I wanted to give a heads up about this because it will catch some people by surprise otherwise.
Right now, units are allowed to operate when the coolant is beyond recommended limits and right up to the âdo not exceedâ temperature. They only react when the coolant is at critical levels, and then they kill the print.
Weâll be adding safeguards so they pause when the coolant is out of the recommended range, then seamlessly restart. Basically, prints in hot air just take longer. Weâll also add a sanity check at the start - if ambient temp is too high, we know the coolant canât cool enough, and it wonât start until itâs somewhere cooler.
In practice, weâve seen no pauses at the office (~70F ambient) over even long prints, but if you blow warm air into the intake, it will alternate between printing and pausing.
The functionality (pause/resume) works great; right now, weâre analyzing sensor data plus discussing with our tube vendor to figure out the right limits.
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My house thermostat is set to 80 throughout the summer. Do you have an estimation of what temps will cause the GF to pause frequently throughout prints?
Fall - Spring wonât be an issue, but summers can get fairly hot (only up to about 110, not near the temps of 120+ Iâve seen others posting, with asphalt temps above 150!)
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I donât know the limits are off hand, but 80 degrees will likely be too hot for a Basic Iâm afraid.
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Dan, Thanks for the clarification. I feel a lot more comfortable with the environmental limitations in the manual with your explanation.
80 is a cool day in Florida, I was running last night between 88 and 91. Glowforge is in my garage.
Just give us a warning that tube replacement likely to be more frequent (or donât roll this out until filters have shipped please?
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If you use the filter all the heat the machine produces will end up in your room, heating up the machine.
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I have plenty of AC capacity in the house to deal with the heat load. Itâs a smell thing for needing the filter, I donât want to punch a new hole in the wall and just spent a lot of money for good double hung windows
not in love with that, some of are in condos that donât have much control of our environments. in my case our radiators are plumbed in series so when the heat is on its on for all units. and it triggers at 68F outside temp YES I KNOW OUTSIDE TEMP!!! totally irrelevant of what inside temp is. I run my window a/câs 11 months out of the year in Massachusetts.
guess we will just have to see what happens, I hate the idea of having a software limit in that could be um âover conservativeâ but thatâs what we get for cloud based software
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My GlowForge moved inside yesterday. I did a few short cuts after an engrave and got an orange button!!! on the GlowForge.
It was only 95 
Did a real fast venting joy with materials on hand so hoping filters arenât too far away
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You have a forever unit. Remember that, as far as we know, the thermal pause is not yet implemented and only when the unit reaches some unknown maximum limit will it refuse to operate. I might worry about tube life when operating in extreme heat until the thermal pause is implemented.
âThermal pause extends the lifetime of your tube by letting it cool down when the room itâs operating in is too warmâ
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And that is where it rightly belongs. 
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And there is a nice message that displays saying that in the future they will implement a pause and cool down but for now it terminated the job.
I was happy to bring the unit inside, temperatures only go up for the next couple of months
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