@dan - ‘grabbing money is one of them’. Love it! In reality - if you are successful, so are your customers! Love it so much I upgraded to pro!! Man - can’t wait to get my hands on it. Gotta make money to stay in business. Staying In business means more features and better experience for all of us. Keep up the hard work!
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I guess I lied, I folded and upgraded to the pro
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@dan
We are the makers. We have a few things to do. Spending more money on a Glowforge pro to get infinate material lengths is one of them. Making awesome products, some of which are 1/2" thick is another. They are related.
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Ok. That’s a fair deal. 
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I couldn’t stop laughing. Great post!
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Sounds like you ordered the wrong machine. Buy a cnc router.
My main reasoning for going pro was the upgraded cooling and additional warranty. I live in a very warm climate in the middle east and after doing research about the cooling systems decided the pro was the way to go. Additionally I will be using the GF for business purposes and therefore the additional power is also a plus. From everything I have read on the boards from other users and from Dan the basic is better suited for a hobbyist and not for the long-term ware of serious product production. For me the pass through is simply a little icing on the cake to be able to accommodate larger material sizes.
Thanks for the reply Dan and clearing things up. I am afraid it was not clear to me in the specs otherwise I probably would not have chosen a pro, I may yet downgrade but I guess I have plenty of time to think these things through, important thing for me was to get my slot booked as it were.
Are you able to confirm if the 1/4" pass through is simply a case design problem or are there obstacles within the GF that prevent anything thicker being used. Simply put, can I hack a big hole in the hole to fit larger material if I wanted to?
Ok I’m going to play devils advocate here. Wouldn’t a CNC router be a better solution if you’re dealing with 1/2" material that is larger than 20x12? I’m not seeing the use cases here. I know we should be able to flip material over 1/4" and cut the other side but I really can’t imagine how effective and fast it’s going to be. Everyone who wants the deeper slot please explain so I can understand what I’m missing.
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There are usually work arounds for this sort of thing - but they are exactly that - workarounds. And be cautious about ‘why are you trying to do that’ - just because a use-case can’t be thought of, does not mean they don’t exist (let’s not turn in to ‘Stackoverflow’ here where every ‘answer’ starts with ‘why would you want to do that?’)
That being said, I thought it would be cool to create baseboards, door casings, and other types of molding. Although 1/4" is too thin, there ARE simple ‘work-arounds’ for my case so not a big deal for me.
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If they have a CNC, and that CNC can accommodate the larger material… then most likey the majority of cases are better served by the CNC.
I hope most of the desire to cut on larger items will be primarily engraving/designs. So making stencils and painting them should suffice.
I want to do this same thing! Why, I don’t know… How do you plan on working around this?
My plan is to do this by laminating it together. Use 1/4" thick would to send through the laser cutter. Then glue that to a half inch thick piece - giving me 3/4" thick pieces (approximately). In general, the ‘laminating’ is a common method when using the laser cutter. It works well!
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Brilliant… I have never used a laser cutter so I am so new to this… Hopefully I will learn lots before mine gets here!
Over sized slot with a door to slide down and meet the material or a brush wall would be ideal function and safety in one go.
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@Jamie The goal for me was to etch wood (not cut it) for signs, props, and decorative pieces. Most of the wood I use is more than 1/4" thick, and I frequently work with plastics that are thicker than 1/4". A use case scenario would be etching a 24" wide sign on 1/2" oak. With the narrow 20" bed on the Glowforge that is not possible, so that’s where the passthrough slot would have value.
If I need to cut something thicker than 1/2" or need deep engraving that’s when I move over to the CNC.
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Thanks Chris makes sense. I’ve always wanted a CNC and I came up with my list of projects I’d use a laser for or a CNC for, before I made this purchase. Obviously decided on the laser but my list pretty much came down to everything over 24" would be better and faster on the CNC and everything under was laser. I should mention most of my projects are in wood, although looking forward to working with the other materials. I can’t stand metalworking (maybe because I suck at it) so that isn’t an issue for me.
I had the same thoughts about this. the hard part, if cutting all the way through the top piece, is putting things together without a lot of glue squeeze out to clean up. It might finally be time to invest in a micro-pin nailer.
@Jamie CNCs are great. I have an X-Carve at home and a ShopBot at my maker space. Both are fantastic, but I still use the laser cutter way more often. Given the choice between a laser and a CNC I’d go for the laser any day. Clean, fast, works on so many materials, easy to use. You made the right choice. 
I understand that the passthrough slot limits the workpiece to 1/4" thickness. I also remember reading somewhere that that feature is good for making bigger furniture pieces. Please explain to me what furniture is indeed built using 1/4’ stock, other than a doll house. Am I to assume that by “furniture” you mean that for a large cabinet door, for example, if I want to engrave a design in a corner of the door, that I would have to do it on a 1/4’ “veneer” that I then glue to the door’s front surface. Most of the projects I build are made with wood that is around 3/4" thick, so a passthrough slot of 1" would have been ideal. I appreciate any thoughts on this. Thank you.