Thanks! It does. 
People jump on bandwagons without knowing what they are doing, and I don’t want to get caught up in that.
Not sure if you saw my reply, btw, but I was the one talking about 6 degrees of separation on FB. I was completely disoriented that you were tagged in a post with some old blogging friends.
That they do
I figured it was. I thought that was a tag in one of the laser groups but then saw it was just an individuals page. I just know Chris through the Glowforge page and he’s helped out a bit with some SEO advice. Small world though
How small? Someone from the Facebook Glowforge group stopped my aunt in the grocery store in Uvalde, TX (pop. 16,298) asking how they knew me.
The compact filter switch in the software helps reduce the noise a bit (my guess is the RPM on the fan drops to ~10k instead of the normal 13k). It still sounds like you’re running a small CNC, however, because that speed is just ridiculous.
If you are out of warranty, want a very beyond the manual approach, and you have a strong inline fan, the internal fan can be removed with an incredible difference to the noise. I honestly think that if you purchase the external filter + Glowforge at the same time there should be an option to not have the fan installed in the first place and/or an option to just have an external fan. Without the internal fan the Glowforge becomes the office appropriate tool it was always promised to be.
I was wondering while I read this, can the fan be disconnected without disrupting the unit itself? Wouldn’t that show up as a failure to the software?
No. Mine has no fan (it broke, I removed it.)
Good to know. I thought maybe a jumper was required once the fan was disconnected.
I was just going off what my friend told me who knows wayyyy more about this stuff than I do lol. I mainly let mine run after the print is over and it helps suck out the last little bit of stuff that is hanging around.
The inline fan that I have is not very strong and pretty far up the exhaust pipe I have set up at the moment. I have a pipe that goes out the window and up about 10’ so my dogs aren’t staring at me while I am running the laser and sucking fumes lol. I love them but oh boy can they be dumb lol.
Gotcha! Yeah for a long run you’d want to keep both working.
I don’t know if the CF switch completely disables the fan or not, but if it doesn’t, it should reduce it to a mere crawl.
My observations were that it reduced the noise level from something like 74-75dB to 54-55dB (which is the motion system). If your fan is still spinning that hard, something isn’t right, I would say.
The fan spins from the air moving over it, same as when you clean a computer fan with compressed air, and it makes the same high pitched noise because of the RPMs of spinning. It’s less with the CF switch on, but it’s still spinning very fast just from the pull of air over a free spinning fan.
Honestly, the Glowforge has always had a volume that bordered on being a workshop tool rather than an office one. That one tiny fan is most of the reason for that, and with a good inline fan it’s completely unnecessary.
Not sure why yours would be so different. I ran the in-line under a foot away from the exhaust fan at full speed and picked up zero noise from the internal fan. Almost sounds like your CF mode isn’t working properly.
The internal fan makes no noise at all when you are only running an external fan. If yours does, it’s likely got seriously worn or contaminated bearings/bushings.
okay - original poster here - I have finally set up the fan. I have one duct connected from the GF to the fan and then one from the fan to the compact filter. I have some test runs as follows:
UI - compact filter off, with fan on and compact filter off - super quiet but smell is strong
UI- compact filter off, fan on and compact filter on… SUPER LOUD (maybe louder than what I started with ) no smell
thoughts? i’m sure i’ve done something wrong!
Now I’m confused. You’re trying to do all of this to not use the compact filter fan but still use the CF as your fume filtration method?
that is one option i’m trying, yes.
my goal is to use GF in my maker room, without having to filter outside and reduce the noise
There is no benefit to adding an inline duct fan when you are using a compact or GF filter. It will likely make things worse because of the positive pressure in the hose between the inline fan and filter.
This… the compact filter fan is going to have to be running.
Thanks!