Passthrough Alighment Issues with Tan Paper Masking Tape

Community Support
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I usually have great results with Passthrough projects, except when I use a material with the tan paper masking tape. I get a lot of large acrylic cuts from ACME plastics and they use a tan masking paper that the Glowforge seems to have trouble aligning. I have had numerous projects with different material backed with the same paper tape and consistently have issues & get a “retry alignment” error. I am only moving up the material 4-6’ at a time because anything more than that will absolutely not align correctly.

Ive tried searching for this issue but didnt come across anything. Is there any way to resolve this?

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I guess you could try masking with a different type/color of masking to make sure that your hypothesis regarding the tape is correct. I would also suggest a change in the lighting around the Glowforge to see if that helps. Sometimes too much ambient light bouncing around can also confuse the camera.

2 Likes
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I would second this. Beamer is in the center of the room. right under the ceiling fan light. so whenever something starts to get wonky the first thing I do is turn off that light. helped so far.

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You could try spray painting the masking paper a different color to see if that helps…

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I’m sorry that you’ve had trouble with your Pro Passthrough print. So that we can look into this for you, if you haven’t done so already, will you read the section titled “Things to Watch Out For” on our Pro Passthrough support page, and then run a test print?

Here are the steps for the test:

  1. Load a sheet of material into the Pro Passthrough slot and ensure that the portion sticking out of the printer is supported so the material lies flat on the crumb tray inside the printer.

  2. Double-check that the material is completely flat against the crumb tray. A quick way to do this is to press gently on the material where it rests on the tray and feel if it moves. If not, you’re good.

  3. It can help to use pins to hold the material flat against the tray. For example, a lot of customers use small pieces of scrap to print these pins available in the free laser design section.

  4. Open the Smooth Curves Stencil from your design library.

  5. Turn on the Pro Passthrough feature in the menu bar.

  6. Select the entire design, and arrange it so that the dotted line at the top of the work area is at the tips of the arrows in the design

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  7. Click Print and run the first section of the design.

  8. After the first section completes, move your material through the Pro Passthrough slot so the printed area is more than 3 inches away from the front of the Glowforge.

  9. Follow the prompts and run the 2nd portion of the test print.

After the test print completes, please send us the following:

  • Photos of the front and back of the finished print.
  • The date and time you ran the test along with your time zone.
  • A photo of the bottom of your print head showing the lens and both windows.

Thank you for sending us this information. We’ll retrieve the data from this test print, review everything and follow up with next steps.

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It’s been a little while since I’ve seen any replies on this thread so I’m going to close it. If you still need help with this please either start a new thread or email support@glowforge.com.