Continuing the discussion from Where is everyone from?:
Im from indiana but i have a ? For anyone to answer
So is there any way to adjust the axis on the fly while the machine is running ? Im running a project and it looks good half way through then get shallower towards the middle of the cycle and yes i did do a surface of my table lol its not much of a diff about .03 in total and was wondering if it could be done so ya dont have to reset and start over
That’s not something that’s possible in the software currently. The only overrides while running are feed and spindle which are firmware features.
There are several reasons it could be happening. You touched on surfacing your table already. You also need to surface your workpiece (or run in through a planer). I make it a habit if I have a piece I haven’t planed to scribble across the surface with a pencil and shave off a couple thousandths with a surfacing bit, especially if I’m running a V-carve, where it becomes really apparent when it’s slightly off. If all the pencil is removed, I know it’s flat. If not, I need to remove a little bit more.
Another reason it could be happening is bit drift - if your collet isn’t quite tight enough, the bit could drift downward, although that typically results in it eventually coming out all the way (and breaking bits or ruining work, speaking from experience!)
The best you can do in the middle of a carve is to pause, note which GCode line it’s on, stop it, go to X0Y0 and Z0, raise the Z up 0.03 and set that to the new Z0, then restart the job from the line you stopped on.