New guy here first cut with vcarve slightly successful

[dme2637]

I made my first cut today with vcarve and I'm pretty green with the software and with my cnc so hopefully someone can help shed some light. I zero'd my bit on the .5" work piece at the top. It appears as though in the toolpath tab that I had everything set correctly and there was a safe Z of .2" When I first fired up the machine it forced the bit down into the workpiece and started dragging it over into the cut thru the work piece. Can anyone explain this? I ended up manually jogging the z up positive .5 and everything ran ok but I shouldn't have to do this should I? Also is it up to me where I choose the coodinates of my machine as far as x y and z. Looking at the piece I cut on my computer screen it ended up being flipped upside down when cut? I'm using mach 3 and I imported the software as mach 2/3 atc arcs in inches.

[signmarketingman]

did you set your software for the z at the bottom of your work piece?

I just looked at the code and it shows set to the top. I am guessing this is the challenge because I do not know your rig..

[dme2637]

I'm confused about that. Why set z at bottom of the work piece? Unless
You always reference your machine at the bottom of your table? Guess I'm a little confused about initial set up.

[signmarketingman]

OOPS wrong post,,,
Back to your post

What profile are you asking about? I looked at the 3 profiles and cannot see anything wrong except that #3 overlaps the other two..
Did you select the correct post processor?

[dme2637]

As far as I know the post processor is correct. Machine has cut fine with other g code.

[iank]

"Looking at the piece I cut on my computer screen it ended up being flipped upside down when cut?"

Have you checked the setup of your MACH 3 software and the coordinate system.

I had a similar problem with my initial setup where I had set the activelow incorrectly on the y axis so it was cutting upside down.

Could you have the same on the Z axis here so that when its told to go to +0.2" its drives the Z axis down instead of up?

If that is the case you should be seeing your z axis retract as this profile is cut for each of the 4 passes.