Residue on the inside of the lid

Community Support
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I have done a little searching in the forum and haven’t found anything that addresses this (please excuse me if I’ve missed another post on this)

I am see smoke residue both on the inside of my lid and on the glass housing that surrounds the tube. Is this normal? The forge is vented practically right out a window (two shallow bends to the dryer tube be cause it sits about 5 inches below the window.

I am concerned this is going to be bad for the optics or the life of the tube or other internal stuff.

Thoughts?

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Smoke goes everywhere when you vaporize things. That’s why the optics do require cleaning periodically. You can check Glowforge.com/support to see the particulars. It gives advice on how to clean the optics. How often will depend on the material.

Residue on the tube or the lid isn’t a problem. But you’ll want to keep the lid camera fairly clean.

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Also, if you fail to clean the two windows and the head lens when dirty the laser beam can cook the surface of those parts. Not all that cheap to replace.

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Here’s a little more searching:

https://community.glowforge.com/search?context=topic&context_id=25280&q=Clean%20tube&skip_context=true

It’s been discussed a lot.

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Thanks for the answer @jbmanning5, that’s right. Complete cleaning instructions can be found here: https://glowforge.com/support/topic/cleaning-service-and-moving/cleaning

I’m going to close this thread, if you have any more questions, go ahead and post a new topic.