My main computer will be in a completely different room than my Glowforge, too. I will still use it for most designing stuff, but will use my iPad in the same location as the laser to do any last minute things before I hit that “glowrious” button.
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Likewise. Mine will be in the unfinished part of the basement. I might have to unplug the CO monitor (
) and/or the cat’s Litter Robot (
) while GF is running.
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well the other room is the kitchen with the hydroponics, or the family room with the projector or the bed room. I am very limited in my condo
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That’s going to depend on the magic power supply they were designing but that caused the shipping delay. Good question to ask because it’s something most people aren’t aware of about UPS systems and then get surprised.
BTW, remember that 800W will be peak and you almost never run at peak power - it’s bad for the tube. Also, high power is used for cutting while engraving is usually done at half or even less power. You can also reduce the power needed by running it slower as a slow engrave (or cut) at low power = a fast pass at higher power (the laser is spending more time on any given point and thus delivering more net effective power for a given power level setting from the laser).
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The plan is to have the Glowforge located in the workshop area of my garage in a special cabinet that allows access by lifting the worktop of the cabinet that it is in. The workshop worktop area is not that big, so worktop space is at a premium. Luckily, the garage circuits can be easily upgraded (conduit snaking along the wall) if needed and its nearby the workshop area too. The filter will be a great addition to keeping dust down. Oh, and there are several slots available in the breaker box too. I don’t have good wifi coverage in the garage but I installed ethernet into the garage so an affordable access point will probably be needed to get the GF to work its magic.
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Never checked what power consumption my current lasers have but I have a computer, laser and compressor all connected to one surge protecter power strip…never had an issue. On another wall plug is another computer and the other laser. There are two more computers running at the same time in a different part of the office suite as well as a mini frig, microwave and of course the A/C…lol. They have all been running at the same time many times😝
Since my shop is in a commercial office park, Im guessing its rated higher than my house electrical circuits…idk…my daughter is the electrical engineer…lol
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ya at most it would be a 20 amp circuit but then you would have nema 20 sockets those are the ones that have a slash in one of the prongs when you look at it. I’m thinking that this 800w+600w is just a hairy number out of the air
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No clue what you just said…lmao
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Never noticed but will check when Im back in the office. For example, what devices would have the plugs on the right??
so you would run that circuit if your going to have lots of things adding up to over 2300w or one bigger then average thing typically mechanical or hvac but not yet big enough to be 240v like say the dryer
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I have 5-15’s on 20A circuits. so it’s not a guarantee you have 15. On the other hand a 5-20 on a 15A circuit would not be safe or to code anywhere I know of.
and just because you swap out the receptacle and breaker doesn’t make the circuit safe. you also need a heavier gauge, I think 12 for 20A but a lot of homes with 15A and cheap builders get only 14.
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When I built my house I wired everything for 20A. But, it’s not the outlet that makes it a 15 or 20 - it’s the wire (and breaker) behind it that counts. 14ga wire for 15A and 12ga wire for 20A. 12ga costs more which is why people don’t just build for 20.
We also wired at least 2 separate circuits per room. Then when we added the generator I was able to make sure every room in the house had at least one circuit on the generator (a small 9KW gasoline one) so no one had to sit in the dark when the power went out 
Funny thing - before we put in the generator we’d lose power a couple/three times a year for a day or more (winter ice storms bringing down power lines). After we put it in, the power company did some work nearby putting up some additional equipment so we went 6 years before we lost power for more than a couple of hours 
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Probably none. Even 20A appliances don’t generally have the side blade. The idea with the standard is that a 20A plug will only plug into a 20A outlet. But there are heavy duty cords (12ga) that have what looks like a 15A set of prongs.
Most equipment doesn’t need 20A though. It’s the total of things plugged into the circuit that says you want to use a 20A outlet vs. a 15A one in practice. For instance a space heater is usually 1500W (12.5A when fully on) so you wouldn’t want to plug two of those into a 15A circuit even though both have the correct plug because the total consumption will trip the breaker (or failing that, heat the wires in the wall and potentially start a fire).
For your stuff, PCs are a few hundred watts. Monitors used to be hogs (sometimes more than the PC) but the new ones are pretty low users of power. That’s why you don’t have issues with what you’ve got plugged in. Keep it under 1800W on a circuit and you’re fine.
Also, the power ratings on things are either at full power or for motors, starting draw (motors often draw more power to start than the will then consume when they’re running at full speed). So if you’re not running things at full speed/power you can have more than 1800W of appliances plugged into a 15A circuit all running at the same time and still not have an issue.
The A/C or vacuum cleaner are one of those things that consumes more power to start than to run. It’s one reason you can sometimes be running the vac and somebody else starts some other stuff nothing happens but if they’re already running their stuff and then you fire up the vacuum cleaner it pops the breaker - it’s the startup on the vacuum cleaner that was enough to overload the circuit.
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I actually use a UPS that has the horizontal blade orientation.
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Did the same in my studio, and ran both circuits to each outlet so I could easily draw from both from anywhere. The electrician thought I was nuts.
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Do you mean you have two seperate circuits connected together at the outlet? Or am I misunderstanding?
You can snip a little connector between the two outlets in a duplex outlet and run different circuits to each outlet. Use a screwdriver or pliers to break off that little connector. The electrician thought I was nuts because he had to run double the number of wires to each outlet. But I was glad I did.
http://inspectapedia.com/electric/Receptacles_0578_DJFcs.jpg
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Yep. As F-o-Glowforge noted, just snip the connector. That way one circuit is the top outlet and the second circuit is the bottom outlet.
Another trick electricians will do is switch the top half of outlets and leave the bottom unswitched.
In either case, you don’t necessarily need 2 whole sets of wires. Not sure if it’s code or not, but I have seen them run 2 circuits on a 4 wire cable - the ones usually used for 3-way switch wiring where there’s a white, black, red and green. white/black/green for one circuit, white/red/green for the other. I suspect that might not be entirely kosher as it allows the white/green to be shared and leakage from one due to faulty wiring would leak onto the other circuit. Others would argue that the white & green wires are all shared back at the breaker box because they go to shared (within the color - line/ground) bars in the box whereas the blacks all go to separate breakers (and then to the main bus bar).
I have no idea whether it complies with the NEC but it’s a bad idea either way, unless all the relevant phase conductors are supplied via interlocked overloads.
Otherwise you risk having somebody disconnect the neutral conductor as part of work on one circuit, only to immediately discover that it’s live and receive a shock.
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