Why is the process for making passthrough cuts so broken? It is so exhausting to spend 3 hours recalibrating, precisely cutting my non-PG materials, measuring, realigning, and praying only to have the material I’m cutting ruined by another misaligned cut. I have tried to place my belief in the automatic alignment, despite being so wildly off, and I’m rewarded with only a minor error in engraving.
And I have recently encountered a new problem where the passthrough UI cancels the print after opening the lid. It’s my fault for bumping the material and needing to realign, but the resulting “Remainder” file should at least have the same settings as the original file. And if camera calibration is the first suggestion, shouldn’t there be an option to include some kind of alignment marks on each step of the passthrough process?
Apologies for the ramblings, I’m just tired of wasted time and materials after sinking six grand into this machine.
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I honestly agree. I have found passthrough to be newly useless for anything that isn’t very detailed where the software can use cuts to try and locate where to place the next cut. Even then, it’s never ever been “spot on”.
I really wish they had invested the time to just develop snap marks for everyone as well. If all the systems can do pass through, then they should all be able to do snap marks from a technical perspective anyway.
Snapmarks gives you what this just cant…reliable accurate placement.
I’ve given up on passthrough, as most of what I want to cut is straight lines.
Another issue is I really can’t understand how this hardware was designed so well, and yet no one decided to make it 1” bigger so we could natively cut 11” high. That is a very very common size. From paper to frames to a million other things, 11” x is a huge value over 10.9”.
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Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear you’ve had a less than amazing experience with our Pro Passthrough feature.
I see you’ve also emailed us, would you prefer to continue troubleshooting here, or via email?
We love to know how we can improve our Pro Passthrough feature, so I’ve passed your feedback on to our team.
To determine the next best steps, could you please provide the following:
- A copy of the design you’re trying to print
- Photos of how your material is supported on the outside of the unit
- Photos of how your material is set up inside the unit
Next, I’d like to have you perform a standardized print for us to get a baseline for how your Glowforge performs with Pro Passthrough prints.
if you haven’t done so already, will you please look through the section titled “Things to Watch Out For” on our Pro Passthrough support page?
Here are the steps for the test:
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Load a sheet of material into the Pro Passthrough slot and ensure that the portion sticking out of the unit is supported so the material lies flat on the crumb tray inside the unit
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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 move
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It might 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.
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Upload the attached test file to your design library
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Turn on the Pro Passthrough feature in the menu bar
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Select the entire design, and arrange it so that the tips of the arrows touch the dotted line at the top of the work area
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Click print and run the first section of the design
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After the first section completes, move your material through the Pro Passthrough slot so the printed area is more than 3in away from the front of the Glowforge.
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Follow the prompts and run the 2nd portion of the test print
After the test print completes, please send us photos of the front and back of the finished print along with the date and time it ran. We’ll extract the logs, review everything and follow up with next steps.
Once we have the above information, we’ll be able to determine the next best steps!
Hello @hamilton.robert.l, it has been a few days since we heard from you, so I wanted to check in. We would like to help work through the trouble you’re having with your passthrough prints.
Did you have a chance to go through the steps my colleague Jeremy provided? If so, can you please provide us with the information he requested and let us know how the test print turned out? Once we have that information, we’ll be able to review and provide next steps. Thank you!
Hi @hamilton.robert.l. It’s been a while since we’ve seen any activity, so I’ll go ahead and close this thread. If you run into any further trouble, feel free to create a new thread, or write us at support@glowforge.com, and we’ll be here to help. Thank you!