Setting Z Axis home on 2D cutting

Hi,

I have done some 3d cutting with linuxCnc and it has been great, however when I try 2 cutting and halftone cutting Im not really sure where to home to the Z axis. If I home it on the top of the material it just moves around but never cuts into the material.

However if I set the Z to the bottom of the material it seems to cut too much. When I generate my g code, I set my thickness to the material width.

Any suggestions would be great.

I have been using the plans from this site www.dxfplans.com/products/category/free/ and also DXF Halftone 2.1 application to generate halftone gcode.

Thanks in advance.

Note: I have attached a tap file generated by halftone Dxf 2.1 as an example.

Rhys

Hi

There is nothing attached, you probably need to change the extension to .txt

From what you are saying I can only imagine you are confusing homing and touching off.

You can home anywhere, normally somewhere out of the way of vices etc for toolchanges.

You touch off to the workpiece at a place where Z equals 0, ie the top surface and conventionally with X0and Y0 at the bottom left hand corner of the workpiece (but that varies depending on the machine)

All cutting moves in your code should have Z as a negative number

regards

Greta stuff. Thanks for the response. I understand now.