I was wondering what you all use for methods of touching off multiple tools when you cut the top surface away like in a wavy flag and you don’t have a tool changer?
If I need to be able to zero while the material will not be available as a reference, I’ ll use machine bed as the standard zero point. Most vectric software gives the option to select machine bed or material surface at material settings. You just need to keep in mind to zero where you are supposed to.
Fortunately, if you zero on material while the toolpath needs a machine bed z0, you wont mess up anything. The mill will just cut air untill you smack your forehead and zero z correctly.
Thank you for that information! I’ve thought of doing that but at times I don’t use the actual material thickness and so it throws me off. I was hoping someone had a sliding parallel type block that you could set to the height of the material and then you could use the block to set other tools to that height.
Hey Tod,
I get why it throws you off. I too had to get my head around on how to get thicknesses known.
One way is to set the thickness of the material a wee thicker than it is and resurface it down to a known thickness. After you have surfaced, you can be sure the material surface is set (x) mm from the machine bed.
I tend to switch around a lot. For example. I make key-hangers from padouk needing a certain thickness. So i have a custom surfacing toolpath that will start at 12mm height and stop at 8mm. After that I am going to engrave . The engraving toolpaths I will zero of the material surface. The final cutout toolpath i’ll zero of the machine bed to safe my jig from damaging too much.
You could surface your material and in the process surface a secundairy piece of material with the same z0 and indeed use that as your surrogate material surface. It does not matter how you create your reference. If it works, it works.
I sometimes leave one side of the material the full thickness and use that side/corner for zeroing all future bits in the project. Simply cut that edge off on the table saw when done. Other time I use the machine bed as noted above.
Lenp
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Virtually all my projects are referenced to the spoil board top,
Maybe this is not the preferred way when carving signs …. but for every thing I do I can’t see a down side.
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