Smoke coming out the front of my glowforge pro

I am having large amounts of smoke come out the front of my glowforge pro. I have seen a lot of posts from people with the same issue but I haven’t seen a detailed solution for this.

Exhaust: cleaned the exhaust fan and the fan on the bottom of the laser mount

Exhaust tube: no bends. 4 feet long. Exhausted out of window. Plenty of room in back of the glowforge and nothing blocking the air intake.

I am not sure what caused this, but it had been working yesterday and then today I went to make cuts for an order and smoke started pouring out of the front of my GF pro.

I have tried everything I can think of to get this working correctly and have done things that have been mentioned in other posts, but have not had any luck.

I am in extreme need of getting this resolved. I have a lot of orders that are now being put on hold and this is the busiest time of our season like most people.

I am also curious what tech support has told everybody that this has happened to.

Everything I see from tech support essentially says they sent an email to the individual and the responses were not put on the forum for others to see.

Thanks for the help everybody.

The air flow through the Glowforge is fairly simple. The air is pulled in through the vents on the right and sucked out via the exhaust fan in the back left. If the air is not exiting the Glowforge, it is because of the exhaust. Have you checked to make sure the exhaust fan is still running properly? In the interface, click the three dots and double check that the air filter has not been toggled to the on position. Does your Glowforge sound normal - is the exhaust fan making it’s normal high pitched sounds?

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I killed the big exhaust fan by trying to clean it several years ago. I got a 195 CFM fan that did not move enough air but I see an inexpensive 6" fan that will need a step up and down to 4" but is 300 cfm which should be minimal. Then if your exhaust fan is running or not this should clear the smoke.

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I checked and the air filter is not toggled on.

When running it sounds like it normally would, just smoke coming out now.

I don’t know what would have changed overnight.

Check the vent to the outside. Pull the hose off of the exhaust and observe if the fan is spinning normally and moving air.

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I can feel the air coming out a little bit but I do not see the actual fan spinning.

You may need to observe it actually engraving something. If you have tile or slate, set a simple engrave which won’t smoke up the house and see if the fan speed seems right while actually engraving. If not, turn the machine off and use straw brushes to clean the fan blades.

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Another thing that happens is a piece of something that blocks the fan from the inside. Very hard to tell with the pro with the coolant blocking the way.

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Ok thanks for the tips. I’m running out for an appointment and will check the engraving this afternoon to see how it works.

I really appreciate the help.

Hey everybody,
I went in and did what was suggested and set the GF to engrave and found that the fan was not spinning at all.

I turned off the GF and investigated more and found a tiny little chip of wood was keeping the fan from moving.

I missed this when I did my initial check because it was so small and it’s hard to see the fan blades.

Anyway, thanks everybody for your help.

I just wanted to get on and let everybody know what caused it.

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