Surface carving

[Bluto]

I'm lost on this one. I cannot find a way to keep it from carving into the surface before it gets to the design.
I am doing flag unions and use various designs. I stain the wood the right color, have my depth set at 0.0 and height at -50 (for example).
The bit begins and when its all done all the stain is gone.
Any help would be FANTASTIC.

[DianMayfield]

I have used a biz card to raise the starting point. You may notice in softer woods that the bit actually dents the surface. This dent is now the surface as far as the software is concerned.

When the machine goes to finding surface, you can hit stop to jog to touch surface. I open the lid and place a business card where I will jog to. Then remove it before the carve starts.

Caution! If you hit stop twice in a row it will cancel your project!!

I have never used negative numbers in the height, so I am not sure of the effect.

[cestout]

Also, if your board is not perfectly flat jog to the highest point.

Clint

[bergerud]

What I do is either eliminate the 0.00 part of the pattern or make a 0.00 height mask to cover the 0.00 part of the pattern.

Part of a pattern which is at height 0.00 gets skim carved. However, a pattern which is all at 0.00 does not get carved at all. The machine ignores it. If one cannot eliminate the 0.00 part of the pattern then make a large rectangle with a hole in it for the part of the pattern you want to carve.

If you upload the pattern, I will give it a go.