Thanks! I was just digging through some other threads for specs. Sounds like the Pro has better cooling but both Basic and Pro use a closed loop liquid cooler or some kind.
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I’m at work, so can’t dig through at the moment, but my understanding is that the cooling is better in the Pro and that both units will monitor temps and pause for cool-downs in an intelligent manner as needed (doesn’t blindly stop in the middle of a cut).
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Yes I think the Pro has some Peltier cooling as well. My best guess is the liquid cooling passes through a heat exchanger that the exhaust air passes through. Presumably on the pro the Peltier is somewhere in the heat path between the liquid and the air to increase the temperature difference. All pure speculation but in the vacuum of no information for 15 months one has to make things up.
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The “bucket” is INSIDE the Glowforge. Therefore it’s much better.
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Welcome, good to have more participation around here.
Enjoy the forum, there is a lot of creative inspiration to be had!
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Well, not exactly a vacuum…
These are from October 2015. No reason to believe that these have changed in the meantime.
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I would expect the peltier to have the hot side with heatsink to be very close to the exhaust port so you don’t generate a feedback loop with the waste heat. They aren’t the most efficient of items in terms of power so you’d best make sure the extra heat generated departs.
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We know the basic has an aluminium block heat exchanger that transfers the heat to the exhaust air. To improve the cooling performance you would split that in two with the Peltier elements sandwiched between to make the water cooler and the air hotter.
Yes but the temperature of the water in the tube is the critical thing, the temperature in the rest of the Glowforge doesn’t matter much. The exhaust flow is massive, so can easily keep it all reasonable cool.
The tube has to be kept at a temperature not much less than the ambient air. That is why you need the Peltier to increase the temperature difference. The hot side of the heat exchanger gets hotter, so heat is transferred to the air faster.
Yes Peltiers are a lot less energy efficient than conventional refrigeration, but overall energy efficiency is not a big issue here. The exhaust will be hotter than it would be as extra heat is generated by the Peltier, but that goes straight outside anyway. The important thing is the tube is made cooler with very little extra space used up. Also it should be more reliable than a mechanical compressor.
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The Basic uses a radiator to cool the closed-loop liquid system; the Pro adds a second, active chiller (the Peltier) that is indeed right before the exhaust.
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Can you say roughly how many watts or Btu/hr of cooling the Peltier has?
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Gonna depend on ambient temps, no?
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Not a spec we’ve shared yet.
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True, but so far as I know commercial units will have some sort of rating, perhaps based on an assumed and stable ambient temperature.
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Can you say what the rating is to an order of magnitude - say between 10 and 100, or between 100 and 1,000 watts?
I’m asking because folks in other forums have raised the question of how long the GF can run before it needs to shut down to cool, even if that’s just temporary and because I’m wondering how much the GF Pro benefits from the Peltier cooler…
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I’ll let you know if and when I have something to share.
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@takitus, @karaelena, @marmak3261, have any of you run into an issue with overheating yet? What’s the longest length of time you ran your Glowforge for?
90 minutes at 5% 675lpi 12 minutes at 85%.
Haven’t bumped into it yet.
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ambient room temperature? , I would ask before and after but you vent outside so I don’t imagine much of a room change
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The biggest engrave I did was like 4 hrs long. It didn’t stop or mention anything about heat. It was at night though. No issues with overheating yet.
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Unless something turned into a big fire, the heat generated by the GF won’t affect room temp. Maybe in a closet. Karaelena measured power consumption at little over 400W using 90% power. About what a common vacuum cleaner uses.
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