I finally had a “need” to use the passthrough after three plus years of owning the machine!
Nothing too fancy, was making a template for a dashboard for a small motorboat, and wanted to test the fit of the components and the dashboard before making a final cutout on my cnc router.
The passthrough did it in three separate cuts. The only flaw was that I didn’t have the juice turned up quite enough to cut through the cardboard cleanly, but overall it was a success. Very small imperfections in the alignment, no more than 5 thousandths if that, barely discernible to my middle aged eyes.
And, the template gave me an opportunity to modify the design slightly for a better fit, so, mission accomplished.
Maybe, maybe not.
Even with wood and acrylic it is hard to keep it flat on the crumb tray.
The chance of it bowing from sticking outside the machine and messing up the parameters is high with the long resources.
I even pushed a rod into the gap once to maintain pressure on the material because I did not want to take a chance it would not cut all the way.
Thanks for the suggestion, Brokendrum. I can see how a long, heavy, unsupported piece of material would cause this issue. However, based on the tutorial, I did use my hold-downs to keep the cardboard from bowing. The overall piece was about 28" long, so not hanging out too far from either end. I think the issue was that I wasn’t calibrated for the packing tape on the edges of the piece. I am going to make another prototype, this time out of MDF, and should have the settings dialed in for that a little better.
