I’ve almost made it to 4 hours and never had a pause, but 80 degrees has not been a problem in Boston yet (mostly 50s - we just set a record for june in the 40s this week)
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Long runtimes appear not to be a problem so far on the Basic, and the Pro should be even better with the enhanced cooling system.
I would totally expect a PRU to pipe in some on this. It seems to me that long runtimes and testing would be part of the intent there. Also, Glowforge does have a machine in the office that has, if I understand other posts correctly, been getting a duty cycle beating with someone tasked to keep it going.
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Like I said, that happens here just walking around town (or riding a bike) with the phone in your pocket! It’s definitely annoying.
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I imaging it will run continuously up to some ambient temperature and above that it will need to pause to cool down. Looks like so far nobody has hit that temperature yet.
But GF will have done full environmental tests and know what temperature it starts to flake out at.
You’re assumption is wrong. Not that the answer isn’t interesting or useful, just that I have no interest in using this Pre-Release to find when or if the unit will pause. I’ll be glad for someone else or the company to give me that info. The unit I have has a Pro-tube and as far as I can tell doesn’t have the additional cooling. It would give no useful info so I’m not going to waste the effort when I have my own questions. There is nothing about the unit that I wouldn’t share, there is lots that’s not on my priority list to find out.
I’m also on record many months before receiving a Pre-Release and even to you personally that I would only answer questions in the forum that interest me. (even though in that particular case I went down to the basement and took measurements just for you. You’re welcome.)
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Your generosity is legendary.
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Yeah, guessing so. The pre-release reports are all anecdotal. Knowing the relationship between temperature, power and duration would be quite an extensive test. Pretty sure the company or a third party lab had that as part of their test program.
Not sure what that means. All statistically derived data is anecdotal, just you have enough anecdotes to be confident in the result (unless you have the entire population).
Those of us with PRUs have not experienced pauses despite very long engraves (longer that most people will ever do - I mean that red oak sign I did was a straight 3:54 engrave) so while it is true that isn’t every possible configuration it gives a pretty good ballpark that most people can use.
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I meant anecdotal in the sense that none of us have been reporting temperature. So it hasn’t meant a lot other than making us feel generally more comfortable. Maybe the correct term would be statistically insignificant when compared to the thousand of data points required to correlate temp, duration and power? We want to know under what condition it fails but the best so far is it hasn’t at a relatively long duration. Not arguing a point as to what is right, just explaining my meaning.
And as I have said my Pre-Release has a pro tube, not sure it has the pro cooling. How about yours?
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I’d imagine that nearly 4 hours would be an upper limit that most users wouldn’t come close to meeting on a regular basis, unless running a lot of 3D engraving.
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Every time I think there is an upper limit or even normal use case, I’m proved wrong by the good folks here. Someone will find the limit eventually.
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I plan to bang my head against those limits quite often. 
However I hardly meet the definition of “normal case” buwahahaha! 
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The GF won’t get hotter and hotter for ever. It will reach thermal equilibrium after a certain time. I.e. it will have a time constant. Once you know that time there isn’t any point testing it for longer at that particular ambient temperature.
If the coolant gets too hot, there are two things that happen. First, the tube power becomes unpredictable, and engrave and cut quality may suffer. Second, the tube may be damaged.
Today public units have limits on the second - if you enter the danger zone the machine will simply abort the print, which can mean you have to scrap your material. Internally we have limits on the first. Also internally, we have the ability to pause without aborting (which is pretty neat). Once we get those settings dialed in, we’ll roll it out so that we pause when we’re in the “cut quality suffers” zone.
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Cool. (pun intended) Thanks.
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Actually the first thing that was running out was my bladder. The second thing that ran out was my patience to sit in the room with a laser cutter running (ironically I wanted a pause button). The glowforge however did not run out of cooling capability…
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I kind of wanted to know the difference in the Basic and the Pro units. The Pro units were advertised in having better cooling, and I just wanted to know how much better. I might consider upgrading to the pro before my order ships if the data supports doing so. Has anyone run the Glowforge for 8 hours straight? 10 hours? I don’t see myself using it for more than that in one go.
It is less to do with how long you run if for and more to do with the ambient temperature in the room. If it is cool enough the machine can run forever. If it gets too hot it currently will stop but in future it will pause and carry on. Nobody has had this happen on long prints yet.
The pro will be able to run continuously in warmer rooms. I don’t think anybody has figures yet. It also has a 45W tube, better optics, faster motion as well as the pass through slot.
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I’m not too concerned with the optics, passthrough, or increased speed. I’m only concerned with the workload that it can take. If the only concern is ambient temperature, I can figure out a way to cool down an area for a lot cheaper than the 2000 dollars needed to upgrade it. I will most likely stay with the basic