Pro Passthrough Slot

Ive been on the edge of upgrading since Im only going to be using it for fun and a few business cards/product stands.

The 1/4" thick material maximum on the passthrough slot seems a bit too small for me, is that for sure the final passthrough size?

If it could fit 1/2" it would make a lot more sense to me.

Im not complaining I’m just making sure that 1/4" is the maximum for the passthrough.

Cant wait for the glowforge!

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I agree: I find the 1/4" slot to be a detriment and limiting in the utility of the pass-thru.

Oversized for 3/4" would be ideal.

@dan: any insight into the reasoning behind the 1/4" sizing on the pass-thru?

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I think we were all a bit shocked/upset to find out that the passthrough slot only handles 1/4", which renders it pretty much useless as material large enough to require passthrough is likely going to be thicker than 1/4", especially in my case. Super sad about it.

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Yea exactly, to me it only seems useful at that passthrough size for leather and I’m not going to be making a leather couch cover or anything out of it. Love the idea but not the size.

The first thing some people are going to do when they get their GF is mod the case to allow thicker material through. Rest assured, someone will try this and report back. If this is important to you (understandable!) - I would hold off on canceling - if you can wait to hear what people try. If you are really early in line, this may not be plausible.

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Unfortunately that would void the warranty and id never risk that. One of my other questions, why was it limited in the first place to a 1/4" (3/8" slot)? There has to be a reason

I’m fully expecting to have to void my warranty at some point, either to address the design limitations in the passthrough slot, to add some z-depth to the bed, or to find a way around the cloud dependancy. I would just like to put that off for as long as possible, as the warranty on a new product like this is likely to be needed at some point. If only the passthrough were not so unusable, the case were modular to allow for adding height (1.5" is pretty restricting), and we were not 100% chained to the cloud which comes with a massive amount of restrictions. But at some point I’m going to have to void the safety net, as I expect a lot of others will.

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I suspect the 1/4" pass through size was chosen to mate to the base of the bay with the honeycomb installed. Without the honeycomb you get 1.5" in the bay, but the bottom likely drops below the pass through slot.

I was thinking about that and it seems like thats the limitation, but then why not just make the honeycomb stand shorter for the pro so you can fit a 1/2" piece?

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an excellent question for @dan but if I had to guess the molds are probably already made for the body pieces and now it would be too expensive to modify them.

Guessing here. Focus range of the optics is 1/2", probably the reason why the honeycomb currently allows a maximum material thickness of 1/2". When you take out the honeycomb you still need to ensure that the top of thicker material is within that 1/2" focus. If you lower the honeycomb another 1/4" then you are messing with the laser focus for materials thinner than 1/4". If you just raise the slot to accommodate the full 1/2" material then maybe you run the risk of mechanically striking something important inside as you slide it through. I would think they have thought this through over the past year. Probably anything we suggest beyond S/W is Glowforge 2.0.

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If you have the pro model, the warranty expires after a year. So if you do the modification for the passthrough slot after that point there isn’t any risk to the warranty.

I wonder if it a safety precaution to avoid having any laser energy reflect through open portions of the slot? If so, it seems it should be not too difficult to design a slot cover that adapts to the size of material being passed through.
Fingers crossed the allow for a last minute design change and increase the passthrough depth to at very least 1/2". Otherwise i will be frothing at the bit for my warranty to expire so I can mod mine (upgrade to pro still pending, but i will most likely commit in the next day)

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I have seen it mentioned that it may be possible to bypass the front door safety mechanism and run the GF with the door open without voiding the warranty. This may be a suitable workaround in many cases…

If we’re able to cut 1/2" by flipping the material, it does not make sense to limit the passthrough slot to half that. I bought the Pro for the because it has the passthrough facility but this defeats the object to a large extent.

@dan is the 1/4" passthrough limitation final?

Hendrik

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Yea but then I have to wait a year for the warranty to expire and then try to modify it myself, not something I want to do for a 4k machine. I just wanted to make sure its the final size since thats whats stopping me from upgrading from the basic

dang! I wanted to engrave longboards or skateboards… :frowning: super sad about that, too…

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I recall reading a post on a similar thread that stated the limit on the pass through is a function of hardware mounted to the rear of the case. No idea if that is true or not, but if it is after-market mods will be considerably more difficult. There is an unrelated post somewhere from Dan where he said the Pro model made it to the feature list late in development, as opposed to being planned from the start. Having worked on plenty of new development projects I understand how it happened even if as a soon to be Pro owner I’m disappointed as well.

Dan has addressed this several times I believe. Here’s one reply he made that stuck with me.

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I don’t mind if increased pass through depth requires a mod, I can live with that, I would just like to know if that will be possible. I’d be more than happy to build myself a custom table to support long materials and then you just need a selection of shims to raise the height for focus. A minor issue.
If the pass through is limited to 1/4" though, then I fail to see any reason to buy a pro, might as well just get a basic and save a butt load of cash. Maybe I will have to downgrade?

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