It will use the cutlines as fiducials. Sorry for the confusion: the corners are used as fiducials when flipping. The cut or engrave itself is used when using the passthrough.
Given the work area is substantially bigger than the cutting area the corners could well be outside of it. How far do the cameras reach? Is there is a third area bigger than the cutting area but smaller than the work area?
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Are you asking how to lay out the design to be cut on something oversized? Because I hadnât thought about that yet, but now curious Haha.
Maybe theyâll have a zoom out mode where instead of you resizing the image, you resize the bed and whole glowforge to fit the image. Then you can zoom back in and align the top corner where it needs to go
Yes something where the material is bigger than the cutting area but fits in the work area, which is substantially bigger. Possibly the corners arenât visible to the camera but we might still want to flip and cut from both sides.
And on the pro we might want to do double sided pass through cuts so I donât think it can be assumed the corners are visible for all double sided cuts.
The use cases for this can get very complicated and some scenarios might be impossible where there isnât enough visible to register accurately. Having a complex pattern on the cover film might help. Or a pre engrave pass that adds fiducials.
Yeah. I do really think they need some barcode tape you can wrap around an edge for something like this. Would solve a lot of problems. Unless they have a solution.
But the one case I can see there being an issue is a 6 ft board you want something cut out of the dead center, so you have to flip it. Marking tape, or maybe a clip of some sort.
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I think the the best idea Iâve seen is to have jigs with registration marks. But I think a very important extension of that is to have your svg snap to that alignment within the software. In other words, you can plop your jig in at a 2Âș angle one day, then 31.742Âș angle the next day, and it wonât matter because your image can just be rotated and snap to that alignment every time.
- Tom
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aye, I would love for as many of these as possible be in the tool box. if you are doing passthrough with full size materials you wont really be able to use a jig, so something else here would be necessary. Theyve got a lot of smart people up there though. Im sure they have some ideas up and coming that maybe they havent announced yet because theyre waiting on patents etc like the 3d engrave stuff. Im still pretty excited to see how this thing works!
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Just a reminder, if youâve got a 6 foot board in the past through, it wonât be thick enough to require a double sided cut, so that hole in the middle should be no problem; the maximum thickness going through is a quarter-inch.
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Now you have me wondering if the secret reason they made the pass-through slot only 1/4 deep is so they wouldnât have to deal with double-sided cutting on thick pass-through material?
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Yes, I wonder if they would have made it taller if theyâd known about this newfound ability to use the 3-D engrave capability to get through half an inch from one side!
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I dont know if im planning on leaving it only 1/4" high 
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True enough, people will make them taller, but we canât reasonably expect the Glowforge team to build in support for a warranty ending modification either:wink: if you do that youâre basically on your own.
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The fact that the front to back work area is so much bigger than the cutting area means that even without pass through the basic would benefit from a lot of the pass through type alignment so you can go from both edges of the material.
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Yeah, we saw some very dismissive and non-engaging responses when raising the issue and requesting a deeper pass-thru slot. I think this was over a year ago now.
I agree. The Shaper Origin / https://shapertools.com registers using tape with unique markers. If we have paper sheeting with markers printed on them that we could stick onto whatever weâre cutting (not just proof grade), at least we should be able to identify centre & orientation from that, since the GF lid camera is so accurate at determining the head centre location.
(This seems like such a likely / obvious option for the repetability issue that itâs probably been raised before - sorry if I missed it!)
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I donât see how that would help on material in the 
. The tape would have to be placed very precisely for it to be of any use, and that seems worse than lining up in the UI with the camera. If it wasnât precisely placed, then the GF would have to determine itâs position and orientation relative to some edge or feature of the wood, and therefore might as well just use those edges and features without the tape.
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It could work well because the cameras would be able to pick up the orthogonal perfectly from the patern. So even if the material is not placed exactly perpendicular to the axes, it would not matter because GF would compensste and align correctly.
Furthermore, provided the pattern design is clever enough, GF would know exactly the material edge and corner positions. This also means GF could show us in the software exactly where its centre point is relative to our material.
Since the cameras are apparently so accurate, it could be a complete solution.
I know folks have different needs, but the whole camera targeting the design on the material that is THE method chosen by Glowforge works pretty well. Not sure how this relates, but it seems that if we can lock into a target from miles away and blow it to smithereens from a speeding jet, we might be able to get this figured out accurately for a Glowforge. I know that GPS coordinates assist in targeting, and I know targeting with munitions is often inaccurate; however, every indication I have from placing my designs on the material is that this is going to work. There are improvements to be made, but I just canât see it not working. Itâs backup cameras in cars.
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[quote=âchadmart1076, post:359, topic:3386â] The tape would have to be placed very precisely for it to be of any use.
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Not at all. You could stick the tape any which way you like. The software knows the GF XY axis so it pickes up the pattern relative to that.
Look at some of the Shapertools vidsâŠ
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The point is to determine the position of the material relative to the Glowforge right? So if the software knows the GF XY axis, and can see an edge of the material, then it can calculate the orientation of the material. If you added tape then the software has to determine the tape relative to the material so that it can then determine the material relative to the machine. Itâs an extra step that it shouldnât need.
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