Material Setup and Offset Confusion

I can’t seem to wrap my head around this. I paste the 3d model in, flush with the plane. Then when I setup material to be 1.5" thick, its below the 3d model and I suspect as soon as this hits the cnc machine, its going to plummet down 3 inches. What am I doing wrong?

Also in the material setup window, I cant adjust the model position top or bottom offset, its got some random .00002 number in there.

Maybe this is some sort of bug, because I set the material thickness to 3 inches, then back to 1.5 and all of a sudden I can set the model in the material properly.

The .00002 is the difference between the model thickness and your material difference. When you are selecting model position you are choosing where the excess material is going to be.

Have you checked to see if you have an update? I recently updated mine but I’m not sure if it was for all versions.

I noticed you have your material Z-zero set to be the bottom of your material. I’ve never had it set that way. When you are about to start your CNC do you zero your bit off the top of the wood? If so then you need to have that “Material Z-zero” set to the top. Then off to the right of that is the little blue slider that you can drag up and down to position the excess material. (on top or bottom of the model)

The vids below helped me get started with 3D models in carveco. In the second vid around the 17-minute mark, he talks about creating the material section

Thanks, I did get the zero set properly. Unfortunately, something happened on the carve and the router nut collet thing ran into a piece of the project that was supposed to be already cut out, but got missed. The whole project shifted abruptly.


THAT, my friend, is a drag. I’ve only had it happen a couple of times and in my case it always seems to be because I overlooked something. A facepalm and some swearing later, it’s time to adjust and start over. Looking forward to seeing the final results!

While waiting for a new walnut board to glue up, i had some 8/4 eastern cedar turning into a holy plaque.


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@Chaosweaver NIcely done. You should post this on the Showoff board so that it gets the attention that it deserves.

The archangel Michael! Of course I like it.


Yours came out better than mine :upside_down_face: but I wanted to test out the carving in styrofoam mentioned for practice in another thread.

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