Problems with my glowforge

Hi so I’m totally frustrated at this point, for past 3-4 months I’ve had nothing but problems. Problems began with air assist fan, i emailed glowforge and a was sent out a new carriage plate/air assist fan, then my printer head was malfunctioning, emailed glowforge again I was sent replacement parts, new printer head. Now with new air assist fan and printer head, and new lenses you would think that glowforge would run like a champ, but no I experienced the worst cuts ever, I literally had to run 3 passes on items to get it to cut, I emailed glowforge consistently, only to be told that there weren’t any problems. Then new air assist fan began to make clicking, ticking noise, again I emailed glowforge and sent them a video, again I was sent out new air assist fan, and then printer head malfunctioning again I was able to get some cuts but very inconsistent, I’ve been told that they are sending out another replacement printer head that will take 2 weeks, I am still currently waiting for new printer head,. Last night I received a error message stating that camera not found, my glowforge is totally and completely disabled at this point. I am frustrated beyond belief I’m trying to run a business, and for last 3-4 months it’s been either not working or working at 1/2 capacity.

With tens of thousands of working machines out there, getting the same problem many times suggests that it is either something other than where you think, or something you are doing that others are not. I had a lot of problems with my air assist fan and discovered after a new carriage plate and a new machine that the magnets I was using to hold stuff down had their field above messing with the fan and no matter how often I cleaned it, the fan would stop every time it encountered the field. :man_facepalming:

When seeking to clean it I put a vacuum cleaner hose pulling air through and drenched the fan with hand sanitizer which the excess would get sucked up through the vacuum. This cleaned it to new and except for the magnetic fields, it worked great.

You should now have an extra carriage plate and thus something to experiment with. I would guess that, unless there is a visible issue, you could go over the whole plate, clean everything and retry, and have it work like new.

The same is probably true of the printer head.

3 Likes

I’m so sorry about the frustrating experience you’ve had so far with your Glowforge. I know that this can put a hamper on your ability to fulfill your order for customers, but I appreciate you working so closely with us for each snag you’ve hit.

I see that we have already dispatched the replacement Printer Head, and it should be arriving soon. Once you receive the Printer Head, we can work on reviewing some additional test prints to see if the same behavior is occurring. If it is, we’ll do our best to make sure you have a working Glowforge.

Please let us know once you receive the Printer Head, and we’ll send over any additional steps!

Hello,

This may have nothing to do with your problem and I’m not a very experienced Glowforge owner, but I noticed that Glowforge Proofgrade materials are not accurate to the described thickness. (It’s probably written somewhere I didn’t pay attention to.) Every piece I pull out is a different thickness. I always have to lower speeds to cut when it’s thicker than described. I could never get accurate slot fits when trying to make boxes and checked with a digital caliper to find out that thickness is different on each board and you can even see different thicknesses around the different sides of a single board. I’ve noticed differnt thickness on acrylic and draftboard so far.

The compressed sawdust in draftboard and the center of :proofgrade: med plywoods absorbs water from the air and expands quite a bit and even regular woods will do that to a lesser amount, depending on the humidity where they are stored and for how long. That is in the nature of wood.

Hi @joeplow t’s been a little while since I’ve seen any replies on this thread so I’m going to close it. If you still need help with this please either start a new thread or email support@glowforge.com.