If you are one of the makers that decided to step up your shop game by purchasing a glowforge, you're probably on the same page as me with loving how fast you can go from design to pushing that oh-so-tempting glowing button to get to engraving and cutting.
However, you're probably on the same page with me on the biggest negative with the glowforge as well... it is LOUD. I mean WOW. With every cut up to this point, I've had to step out of my room while it is running, because it's honesrtly unbearable. That would be fine if I kept the glowforge in an isolated room, but it's also in the room where I like to do most of my designing and editing work and has become a serious inconvenience.
That is why, today, we are stepping up our fan game. If you participate in any of the several forums for the Glowforge, you most likely have seen the overwhelming suggestions to use a CLOUDLINE T6 fan as a substitute to the internal fan. This is a really easy upgrade to integrate for your machine and I'd like to walk you through the steps for how to install and hook up this T6 fan, as well as go over my first impressions!
All of the parts used within this walkthrough can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/shop/makers_best_friend?listId=37S0OF2WJG16O
The most important part of setting up this fan is going to be hooking up the 6" hose with tight connections and to ensure no air leaks out. There is an arrow pointing on the in-line fan that shows the direction of air, and you want to make sure the arrow is point away from the glowforge and towards the hose that goes out to your window.
For each of our connections, we are going to first cut the hose down to the length needed and then securing it to the inlets/outlets with a screw clamp, as shown below. For cutting each hose down to size, I first used a box cutter knife and then cutting pliers to break the metal link within each hose.
After the hoses are clamped, it's really important to use foil tape around each seal and make sure it's pressed flat across the entire surface. This will prevent any air leaking out into your room (you'll be able to tell by any smell in the room when running the glowforge or any hissing sounds).
The hose coming out of the Glowforge is 4", so we need to convert the hose up to the 6" that works with this inline fan. This company also creates a fan for a 4" hose, but from reading different reviews and forums, I don't think it provides enough power needed for venting out the air for the Glowforge. You can buy a 4" to 6" converter from any of your local hardware stores, but if you have a 3D printer, you can actually find all the parts you need in printable files here: www.thingiverse.com%2Fthing%3A4362064%2Ffiles
After attaching the hose to the 3D printed parts, we can move on to cutting out a slot for the hose and adapter to attach to the wood piece fit to the window. For this, I just used the 3D printed window adapter as a guide to mark out the circle hole needed, and then used a jigsaw to cut out the hole. From there, we can simply attach the adapter with some screws to the wood.
Finally, just attach the hose to this adapter with another ratchet clamp and seal it with the foil tape!
And now the setup is all done and the inline fan is ready for use!
If you want to see a live comparison of the Glowforge running with its internal fan versus the AC Infinity fan, check out the video at the top of this page. Either way, I have to say that I couldn't be happier with the results from this upgrade. The fan is infinitely quieter than the Glowforge inline fan, and its absolutely kicking butt at venting out all of the fumes during all of the most intense laser engravings and cuts. I highly recommend making this upgrade as one of your nexts for this machine and hope this post helped!
