I am having a major issue with my Glowforge. The unit won’t vent out the smoke properly from the machine. I have it hooked up to an exhaust hose going out the window. I checked the hose and there are no obstructions, yet smoke is coming out of the machine from the front of the unit and filling the room with noxious fumes. I cleaned the exhaust port on the machine, even though it looked fairly clean, just to make sure there were no obstructions there. Likewise, I moved the machine and used the hose that came with the unit and ran it out the door to the outside just to see if it is my hose that is the problem. It still filling the room with smoke. Right now, I have to write my customers to let them know that their orders will be indefinitely delayed as I don’t feel safe using the machine while it is like this. My suspicion is that the fan is not spinning at the proper speed. The machine sounds a lot quieter than it did yesterday. Yesterday I used the machine all day with no problems and have not experienced this problem before with the unit. I only use Glowforge Proofgrade material and not sure why this problem is happening.
If you provide the date, time, and timezone from the last attempt, Support will be able to review the fan speed from the logs.
In the meantime, if you have some glass, tile, slate, or rock (non-burning materials), you could try a test engrave at low power with the exhaust hose disconnected* so you can feel if there’s significant exhaust out the back. Standard disclaimer: This is a hopefully helpful, but completely un-authorised, troubleshooting step. Be safe!
* you do not want to laser these materials without venting in the long run, but a couple of minutes probably won’t kill anyone…
Or just run a design with no material in the machine and power 1. It shouldn’t make any fumes so you can remove the hose and see if the fan is spinning.
Agreed with all the suggestions that the fan might be dead. I’ll throw out my standard: get an inline booster fan to help the suction; but obviously thats secondary to getting the main fan working. Good luck!
