Purposely changing Z Height while carving

Gen 2 Elite Series
1

Greetings, I just took possession of a Gen 2 Elite Series Foreman 4’ x 4’ machine with a Realtime controller and I was wondering if it’s possible to change the Z height, on purpose, while the machine is cutting.

Thanks in advance,

Michael

2

Hey Michael. I’m curious on why you would want to do that? Are you talking about changing the Z position while the spindle is cutting?

3

Just in case I want to have, for example, a second line of text to be deeper..

Or if I’m flatting my spoilboard in two passes and I want to cut deeper on the second pass..

4

You can adjust your Z-zero, but not in the middle of a cut. I do this when flattening a workpiece or the spoiler board.

Example: I have a surfacing toolpath that cuts to a depth of 0.03"

  • I’ll zero out X/Y/Z, either with the touch probe or manually.

  • I run the toolpath so it takes off 0.03" of material.

  • I want to take off an additional 0.01" of material.

    • I jog the machine down to Z = -0.01", then zero out Z. Z-zero is now 0.02" above the surface of the material.
    • I run the same toolpath with the DOC of 0.03". It will only cut 0.01" into the material because Z-zero is .02" above the material.

    Note: I only do this when running toolpaths with only a single pass. If you take this approach on multi-pass toolpaths, you’ll be wasting your time cutting air until you reach your material.

5

Thanks Tommy,

I ran a CaMaster Cobra X3 for 14 years using WINCNC as the controller. We had a special macro that allowed us to make the changes without stopping the program and re-z-zeroing the bit. It came on very handy when needed.