Incentive to buy a Pro model now 
I have been seriously considering a second unit and probably will go with Pro.
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As you can see with the examples above, some users with a Pro went epic in the trials.
I had no large design to attempt and only one chunk of board handy that I could call large, so I just took the largest project I had completed and went for larger.
The original tower was max sized for a Pro bed (19ish inches)ā¦
The large one was on a 32 inch board I had laying around.
It went very smoothly, and several updates have been made to the process since, so Happy Trails.
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Very nice! I submitted my application and am anxiously waiting to see if I get selected ā¦ 
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And now you know why my Antique Fan project went silent. My brother @timjedwards was beta testing this feature and I wanted to do it on his machine instead of piecing it on mine. That was early in the testing, though, and we ran into some problems. Now that itās working well, COVID has kept us from trying again. SOME day, I will get it done!
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I was not a pre-order but ordered early 2018. I bought with the impression this was included. I received no communication about it not being part of the product nor was I granted an opportunity to withdraw my purchase after being informed of this change in policy. I cannot find a notice of this change or a notice of this policy in writing anywhere a purchaser might find it on your site at the time I purchased my forge. If you have proof of such a notice or communication to purchasers such as myself, please share it.
Why would I think it was included? The software support of passthrough was listed on the GF website at a date very close to my date of purchase. the wayback machine shows this content as recently as Janurary 2018. That would exactly be when I was considering / making the purchase.
If some machines are capable, a clear explanation of why it is not working reliably on other machines and a description of the plans to provide this feature for owners of such machines or other mechanism to make such owners " whole" is requested. We all bought the same machine but what was delivered is clearly not the same, machine to machine. That is not the fault of the purchaser.
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While there was talk of things that couldnāt be done right away, and may never be possible, it would truly be a bad faith move to now attempt to claim that because of that, some people wonāt have it without recompense.
Letās say you explicitly did state it was removed as included an I just donāt recall.(There were a lot of updates back then.)
Given that as of January 2018, it was listed as an included feature, I can copy my confirmation email from 9/4/17 that says nothing about no passthru software would ever be available to my unit or partially available to some, but not others due to changes you may make in whatās supposed to be the same unit you sold to someone else at a later date.
Think you need/may want to make some clarifications here.
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Did I miss a comment somewhere? I donāt recall them saying that it was to be a paid feature.
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Yeah, nobody said they would charge for it.
The issue appears to be that not all machines are technically capable of it, possibly due to the head or macro cameras not being able to pick up enough detail.
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Eehhhh. Yeah. My badā¦imma change that.
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I wouldnāt waste time worrying about it until you find out it flat out doesnāt work at all on your machine. 
I got my final unit a couple of months before you received yours, (November 2017), one of the original production units, and it works brilliantly on my unit. Absolutely perfect as a matter of fact.
I think the point Dan was trying to make was that even though they didnāt have to do it, they did it anyway. (And they didnāt have to. I kept the letter.)
Just try it out before worrying about it. You might be very satisfied.
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Not real big on anyone implying that the company was still working on the pass thru with some noble motive. If the company didnāt have to, it was just a legal technicality. Nothing ever has to be delivered if the option to get money back is there, or we accept delivery knowing it doesnāt work as advertised. The email you mentioned pointed to a web page that described what was working or not working at the time. The pass-thru was listed as āto-doā and the specs still had the automatic pass thru S/W listed.
This horse has been beaten to death. If folks wouldnāt continue to sugar coat stuff, I wonāt feel obligated to salt it.
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And if folks would quit salting it, I could move on to other things, because I realize I no longer fit here.
Everyone is entitled to live his/her life in whatever state of mind they choose, but when I see folks scared for no reason, Iām going to point out the obvious.
Which is:
We are getting the passthrough software, which is what we wanted. Itās time to sign up for it and test it. Then decide if we are going to be disappointed for the rest of our lives or not.
Iām not going to be. Whatever they come up with next is gravy, and Iāll look forward to seeing it. And I think the whole team has just performed miracles over the last couple of years, and I hope they continue to thrive in the laser world.
Iām sure Iāll be very impressed with whatever they create next.
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Great that your machine works perfectly. I am thrilled for you. You got what everyone though they were buying.
The issue is that it does not work reliably for everyone. I, for example, am more likely to encounter the need to retry often and manually align about 1/2 o the time. Manual align is not perfect and has a tough time getting the angle right is it is not perfectly square to the machine (which can happen on a previous auto align). This makes the prospect of wasted time and wasted materials, and wasted tube life very real to me. Thus, I hesitate to use the feature and often spend additioanl design time working around the size limitation or end up accepting smaller than desired designs. I worked hard during the beta to make sure they had data from my machine to work with. I feel let down by the position they have taken.
You seem to feel this is not big deal for those afflicted. So, care to swap machines?
And as far Dan not having to get this done, given that it was advertised at the time I bought my machine (I did not pre-order) and I received no letter or email or other communication on this, I think they have a fairly clear obligation which cannot be erased by changing the website content post-facto or offering auto slicing ( which fails to deliver the core promise).
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Itās different than snapmarks. For material you do a single pass on, then I agree it is better than snapmarks. Snapmarks allow for pass through jigs and I havenāt identified a way to do that with the beta pass through software.
For what itās worth I have the second Pro known to be delivered to a customer and while I havenāt used my unit much in the past two months, this feature worked within my expectations last year.
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To me it is a company run by decent people. Would gladly have a beer with the folks that work there. But it is a company. It has profit motive. It does what it does for long term survival.
I have intentionally never said anything negative about the company even during the worst times, but I also wonāt say anything positive that isnāt clearly an opinion or based on the unit I have in hand. Thatās because I donāt have first hand knowledge about their operation, staff, priorities, finances or schedules.
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I will quit discussing this when my machine works properly with this feature. I am not scared for no reason. I have a legit issue that you seem keen to gloss over. I get it, you got yours so the rest of us should accept our fate and be quiet. I am sorry but that is not an attitude that is aligned with the overall vibe of this community.
Itās not a paid feature. Weāll include auto-slicing and, when possible, auto-alignment on all pro units.
Weāre not actually sure - thatās what the beta will help us determine.
Indeed, weāre going to do our best to do it, and make it reliable for everyone. Weāll do our best, and we donāt know what the outcome will be.
Regarding the website copy, Iāll take a look because itās very possible youāre right and left incorrect information on the site during some period. I know itās not there now, and wasnāt there when we shipped, but Iāll take your word that it might have appeared somewhere in between.
That said, it really doesnāt matter from a practical standpoint, since weāre going to continue to work hard to make it work for everyone we can anyway.
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Look, I think my glowforge is a great product. Iām happy lasering and I get good service. Iām also glad I get some updates on the software side. Being cloud service and all. But when I bought my glowforge in oktober 2015 passthrough software was a thing. When the hardware was shipped the UI software was (and I think still is) still in beta. Thereās probably a good insured reason for that. Itās spring 2020 and now passthrough software is presented as a new free software upgrade? You already sold that promise in 2015. Together with all the models in glowforge marketing video. And what $200 nobody outside the US could spendā¦ I donāt think Glowforge as a company is fair. I think their product is great and Iām still glad I got this one instead of a K40 or Muse. But I lost faith in what shouldāve come after loooooong ago. (say winter 2018/19, 4 years after I initially bought/ backed the machine)
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One more note about getting the best performance: lighting is important.
If you have bright light sources over your Glowforge it might be a good idea to turn them off or block them during passthrough projects. The bright spots they make and shadows they may cast can make it harder for the software. Iāve had stages fail to align, but then I turned the lights off and it matched up with no problem.
(@mark14 your story reminded me of this.)
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Spot on. I have a piece of cardboard the size of the lid that I put on when doing pass-through work. That stopped my auto-alignment failures.
I canāt turn off the lights because itās a basement & I do most of my work at night 
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