I and my team on Facebook, have discovered a factory defect in the glowforge power supply that effectively kills a glowforge in 2 years (great for profit) the name of the file is usually where the defect was found from tip:
My amateur detective work, shows the older the glowforge, the better it was made.
the original basics has two intake fans, Hard plastic wheels, Better quality work
the newer the glowforge the more flimsy its been finding a single cooling fan in a pro
and other random factors. also I think the refub they use are repurposed defective returns
slapped repaired, or not repaired at all, just a quick cleaning and re released into the wild.
This looks to be more of a defect in the insulation of the HV wire. Once that is breached, intermittent shorts to ground would likely kill the power supply.
Does it look like the HV wire is rubbing against something?
I think it is likely that the power supply has not changed since the original. It was designed by a reputable power supply company and so far proven to be decently capable and reliable.
It’s definitely an insulation issue and how they feed it through the machine. It doesn’t hurt the power supply (most of the time) because a laser tube is just a giant short circuit anyhow. Jonathan’s team has repaired the bad insulation on numerous machines and the power supplies still work perfectly. Shorting the secondary on a flyback transformer does no harm to the PS, but it does make the machine not work while it’s shorted.