Air Carving - Why

Carved a wave in a flag with Round over bit just like I have many times then proceeded to set Z for for the Stars with a 60 Deg VB it probed fine but when I hit start it went to position correctly and ran about 1/16 above the surface following the wave pattern. So I rechecked made sure probe base was upside down and nothing on the wood surface. All looked good, ran program still air carve.
Manually set Z with paper and Ran program still air carving.
Rebooted and unplugged machine Homed reset XYZ ran program still air carving
Checked source data
Machining from Material surface - Checked
No Offsets - Checked
Project tool-path on 3D is checked
Post P is 1F inch as is control setting As is Aspire and Controller is also inch
All Layers are active
Haven’t checked Controller settings don’t know what to look for, Any suggestions

Did you tell it to follow the surface in Aspire? I know when doing carves on 3D art using VCarve it defaults to the material surface, not the carved surface. I would think Aspire would be the same.

Project tool-path on 3D surface is checked and it follows the contour in the air

Can you zero Z, move X/Y somewhere there’s space below, drop the Z 1/16" and reset that as Z zero? It’s hacky I know but sometimes be a blunt instrument is better than fighting.

I did “0” it lower than the true Z but probably not a 1/16
I did have to sneak up on one like that before what a pain
Will have to tomorrow because I have someone’s Christmas on my table

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Maybe take your gcode for the v-bit tool path and look at it with a gcode viewer. Is the gcode telling the Z-axis to start higher than the wood surface?

If so, you’ve narrowed the problem to your CAD/CAM/post-P. If not its something in the controller or machine itself.

I use this one - it has a XYZ readout

-Mark

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Thank you. I will check that out.

It was weird that the first carve was right on and then 2 path was off by 0.21. 3rd path was off by the same 0.21. 4th path was off by 0.21 and the last cutout I didn’t dare lower for fear it would plunge into the table and it cut right on the money.
I decide I was going to delete the tool-paths in Aspire and start fresh, but it’s weird because I just cut 2 flags ahead of the one that But I just now remembered I tweaked something just before the last one so We will check it out. Thanks for putting on to the G-code viewer.

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