Glowforge Ruler for Crumb Tray - Perfect placement and Passthrough Alignment

I had a small project I needed to work on for a family member and I ended up needing to use the pass through. My camera alignment, like many others is never in the right place so I thought I would go ahead and create a ruler to help with the placement of the design for cutting as well and to use for manual indexing for the pass through.

The rulers are inspired by @Jules Pro Only - Passthrough Alignment Jig Templates 🤔 and @johnse Passthrough Alignment Tutorial with Manual Indexing. Thanks Jules for the great write up. So here is my little contribution to the wonderful community.

There is a left ruler and two connecting top rulers. This let’s me estimate the horizontal and vertical position of my pieces relative to my cutting bed.
So zero, zero closely corresponds to zero, zero in the GUI.

The right ruler is there mainly for me to align material close to the 19.5 in mark so I can cut close to the edge. ( it is slightly skinner than the left ruler, at least for my GF ).

Either left or right ruler can be used for manual indexing.

These designs have zero kerf and can easily be adjusted.
The rulers are completely numbered unlike the picture of my prototype.

Left and right ruler are the same width, so it will overlap with the cut area.
Good for pass through alignment.GlowforgeRulerGuide.ai (1.1 MB)

The SVG has the right ruler adjusted with a smaller width so it can be used for aligning to the edge of the cut area on the right.
GlowforgeRulerGuide.svg.zip (12.7 KB)

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Interesting…
I have been using these…

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Thanks so much for these! Should help lots of folks.

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Great idea! Thanks for sharing the design! :grinning:

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I can’t find them…maybe I need more coffee? :eyes:

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You do!

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Ooops, Silly me. I forgot to upload the file when I added the image.
I edited the original post with the zip.

@rbtdanforth, Great idea of using the diagonal to print the 20 inch ruler.

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Oh, man, @timjedwards almost had me convinced I was losing it. Stop that, Tim! :stuck_out_tongue:

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Thank you for sharing

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A great share … Thank you!

OK- so I am new here. If I cut this ruler and put it in my bed along the glowforge tray edge- these numbers will align with the numbers on my screen. Is that correct?

That’s the idea, Recently I found out that my right side ruler isn’t the right width. For some reason my ruler needs to be narrower. I need to do some testing when I have a little more time. You can test out the ruler by prototyping on cardboard.
Welcome to the community. :smiley:

@azizarussell Silly me, I forgot that the right ruler is only for passthrough alignment.
Using the left and the top rulers, that will align with the screen. You’ll have to test it for your bed but it should be pretty close.

Can you open if you don’t have AI?

I’ve uploaded an SVG version which has a skinnier right hand ruler.

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It looks like your 0,0 for the ruler is the top left corner of the crumb tray? Just curious where your reference points are on the crumb tray (top and bottom) so I place the ruler in the right place on the crumb tray so it correlates with the ruler in the GFUI.

On my crumb tray, there is an arena where I can place material and it doesn’t really shift from the bottom edge of the crumb tray. I use that as my reference point for putting down my ruler. You will have to do a score on some scrap material to see where you will need to place the ruler. I hope that is clear.

I’m having some issues using these rulers to line up my workspace…

When I align the rulers with the edge of the crumb tray, I can’t see the rulers at all…

When I added a scrap 1.75" square piece along the left edge of the crumb tray (to bump it over, and still keep it square with the crumb tray), I can see the ruler, but I’m losing a lot of space.

Obviously, I could make a smaller jig, but I’m still losing a lot of space… especially if I want to use these rulers to help line up larger pieces going through the pass-through slot.

Am I missing something? Should I reconfigure my glowforge? Anyone else having issues?

@cchhun, would you mind taking a screenshot of what your UI looks like with your rulers in place?

New to Glowforge but placement is confusing. I love the idea of these rulers you created and here are my questions:

  1. When in place, the rulers are up against the open grid edges of the crumb tray (not over the top of the black solid metal?)
  2. I’m cutting mylar and need about an inch free-edge on all sides of the design before the design begins. Are these rulers to indicate the area of the glowforge that does not cut? I’m using a Pro Model. And in that case, would I then put my material under the rulers?

Thank you so much. You folks are all so amazing!

Hi there, welcome to the community.

Yes these are ment to sit on the grid area.
Yes that’s correct. The rulers are suppose to represent the area outside of the cut area.