Pass-Through Wizard

Tools ▸ Pass-Through Wizard · ◆ Black · needs a camera and a pass-through machine

What it does

It cuts a piece longer than your bed — by splitting the job into panels, and using the camera to measure where the material actually ended up after each slide.

Why the camera step is the whole point

Anyone can split a long job into sections. The problem is what happens between them.

You cut panel 1, slide the material along, cut panel 2. If the slide was 0.01" off, panel 2 is 0.01" out. Slide again and panel 3 carries panel 2's error plus its own. ⭐ Errors compound, and by the fourth panel a job that started within a hair is visibly stepped along its length.

So ALPS does not assume the slide was accurate. It photographs the registration marks and measures where the material actually is, then corrects that panel. Each panel is registered against reality rather than against the previous panel's hopes, so nothing accumulates.

Before you start

• The machine needs a pass-through — a front and rear opening.
• The camera must be calibrated. Every measurement here comes through it.
• Support the material outside the machine at both ends. A long sheet that sags as it exits is not in the plane you calibrated.

Step by step

1. Open your job — the full length, drawn as one piece.
2. Open Tools ▸ Pass-Through Wizard.
3. Panelize this job for pass-through.
4. Set the Feed axis (the direction the material slides) and the Material origin.
5. Overlap w/ previous — how much each panel shares with the one before. See below.
6. Check Slides needed — that is how many times you will physically move the material.
7. Registration marks are placed for you.
8. Run panel 1 the normal way — Send it now via the normal Send flow.
9. Slide the material. Roughly is fine; that is what the measuring is for.
10. Capture a photo and run detection for the next panel. ⚠ If you skip this, the panel says Run detection on the previous step first and will not proceed.
11. Check the Translation it measured, Review before applying, apply, and run.
12. Repeat to the end.

Overlap

Overlap gives the camera something shared to measure against between panels, and gives you tolerance for a slide that was not perfect.

⚠ Too little and a panel can land with no usable registration. More overlap costs a little bed length per slide and buys reliability; on a long job that is a good trade.

⛔ The mistakes that ruin a long job

• Do not move the material while a panel is running. Obvious, and it still happens on a long sheet somebody leans on.
• Do not skip the detection step because a slide "looked right". The looking-right slides are exactly the ones that put 10 thou into the job quietly.
• Do not let the material rotate. Registration corrects a lot, but a sheet that has twisted between panels is a different problem, and a long thin sheet twists easily.
• ⚠ Check the residual/translation before applying, every panel. A wrong correction applied to panel 3 of 5 wastes the whole length, not one panel.

Related

• Registration Wizard (registration-wizard.md) — the same measure-don't-place idea, for a single piece. Read that first; this is its long-material sibling.
• Bed Camera Calibration (bed-camera-calibration.md) — required. Everything here depends on it.