3D carve on a sliced log round

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I am having issues with a 3D carve on a sliced log round were the finer detailed cuts are not deep enough

I have a X-50 Journeyman while using vcarve pro.

The piece I am carving is just a sliced log round (I don’t know if there is a better term), so it’s a rough circle. I want to keep the natural look of this project. My first thing I do is make the piece flat, I run a surfacing bit and manually jog it over the piece, flip over and proceed on the next side.

Now I am ready to carve. I use a 1/4" EM for the rough cut, setup the XY in the center of my project and probe for Z, with the probe upside down. After the EM gets done with the cut, the machine jogs back over to the center, I change out the bit to a 1/8" BN. Again, I probe for Z (the center of my piece does not get touched by the EM, so the height of Z is always constant) with the new bit, and I start the carve.

The BN is carving on the appropriate XY but I believe the Z should be cutting deeper, probably 1/16"+ deeper. Additionally, I can tell when I use a 60° VB for the name, the carve is very shallow and barely visible.

I know it’s the operator error in understanding how to probe for Z on a non conventional carve. Your help will be greatly appreciated.

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My first guess is that the wood moved after you roughed out the triangle and other features. There’s a lot of stress in cookies waiting to be free. I would set the z for first tool, then use a reference block off to the side of the workpiece. Touch off that block and hold on to that number. When tool 2 comes up use the reference block and enter that number as your Z value. Also if possible, release your clamps after roughing to let the wood “spring”. Then re-clamp and follow up with a light roughing recut.

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