For the past 6 or so times I’ve powered up my Glowforge Pro to cut something, it starts decreasing in power towards the end of the cut. It will be cutting great for the first 75% (ish) of the cut and then slowly taper off in power until at the end (last 25%) it is only making it halfway through my 1/8 birch plywood. I can even see the light of the laser get dimmer and dimmer. No matter how big the cut is (40 seconds to 8 minutes or more) it slowly looses power, and the last 25%(10 seconds, 2 minutes) won’t go through. Even if it starts a new line in that last 25%, it doesn’t gain the power back but continues to decrease. I’ve cleaned the lens twice, unplugged and restarted multiple times, switched computers, and made sure my material is flat and free of knots or oddities… It is even doing it on acrylic… Nothing seems to work. I can’t cut anything. Need and would love some help!
That doesn’t sound like a user-serviceable problem to me… in my relatively ignorant opinion, a power supply or laser tube problem. Maybe cooling. But I thought there are sensors for that, so it seems like it would indicate a fault.
In any case, I would brace myself for potentially needing to send it in while waiting for the fine folks in Glowforge support to do their remote diagnostics thing.
What light? The glow in the tube? The impact on the material surface?
Can you upload a picture of what it looks like after the cut?
Have you performed a cut like the Gift of Good Measure on a piece of draftboard to see how that responds?
I don’t know that I would jump to that conclusion right off the bat. Warped material could do something similar, but should be evident in the cut pattern. The crumbtray not seated correctly could also do that. It’s worth troubleshooting a bit Or… the tube could be going. Looks like this may be one of the original machine / or coming up on a couple of years old?
One other thing to check is to hold that birch plywood up to a flashlight and make sure you don’t have any glue plugs in it or hard streaks. (The light getting dimmer is problematic, but you do want to check the material too, just to rule it out. You might want to try a cut on one of the Proofgrade plywoods or draftboard if you have any on hand.)
Thanks for letting us know. We are looking into this and will let you know when we have more information. In the meantime, could you please post the front and back of the prints that were having issues with cut through?
this may be happening to me as well? - it’s the reflection of the laser off the surface “light” getting dimmer that i notice. but i’ll clean the lens, burn a 2nd time, and it looks “bright” then. i wish i knew what it was, as i believe im out of warranty… will watch this post, and post if it starts happening more frequently for me as well… thanks for sharing.
@chris.mouser I would suggest starting a new thread in Problems & Support so the support folks can help you with troubleshooting. The threads here open a support ticket, which is tied to the person opening it, so to get help with your own issue you need to open your own ticket.
Or… the tube could be going. Looks like this may be one of the original machine / or coming up on a couple of years old?