HI I have a strange problem.

Here is what I am doing.

I have a gear in 1/8 inch stock that I am trying to cut out
so I make the dxf in autocad and use lazycam to import the dxf which works fine if I sto there I can go back into mach3 and cut the part. I set the top surface as zero for z and the part gets cut just fine.

However, if use the lazycam feature I just paid for which is the offset. I want to offest the cutline to the outside of where it is current is so I select the cutline  and the choose the offset button, select the tool, here is where I get a little confused I would think that I choose outside for the direction of the offset but the new cutline appears to be inside the original cutline so I end up choosing the inside offset this at least looks right (if someone can explain this  it would be appreciated as well) but back to my z issue. After I choose the "inside offset" I press the offset button.  I delete the original cutline and post the code to mach 3.

I expect it to cut just as the previous cut went except the cutline has been adjusted outward.  But what happens is that my z axis movement is now going up instead of downas if I am cutting the part from the bottom.

If I stop the code from running and try to jog the z axis it works just fine up is up and down is down
I have added two attachments  10611.tap is the correct cut prior to offsetting and 10612.tap is after the lazycam offset function.

You clean the file, then select the complete gear profile, then click the offset tab. You first select a tool and the tool diameter must be able to cut the profile, ie; if it is too big in diameter then LC will  create the offset, but, the created offset would start to exclude that which can't be machined with the large diameter tool. This is not a CAD program in that you are scaling something but rather you are giving machining instructions that need to make sense. That said, you the select outside and click Create offset. LC will create the offset and the offset is shown in the project information. Select the original profile and un-enable it, then select the offset created by LC ( by the way you can change the name of the offset if you wish) and now go to the Layer Tab in the bottom of the screen. This is where you define depth of cut for the selected tool and plunge clearance and apply it to the layer.
Note that the cut depth should be a negative quantity ie; -1.0 for 1 unit total depth cut.

All explained in the manual .......Tutorial #1 and see Tutorial # 6 about plunge clearance. The manual is located in Members Doc's.


BTW.....Post the DXF file.

I assume that you have Mach configured correctly for the Z axis movement.

RICH

I thank you for the information. I actually cut my part. I am not sure where the issue lay there were several things I was missing but the main point is that it is working now. The key items were unenabling the original cut layer as opposed to deleteing and the cut depth.

Thanks for the assitance

In your opinion is it actually better to do the offset in Autocad and make the dxf or use the function in LC to offset the original

jjanes,
Both ways will work, but, you still need to define machining parameters to the profile. LC "sort of" checks if the tool is not correct.
The only time i do the offset in CAD is when it just will not do an offset and there are only a few times when that happens.
If you are doing multiple machining tasks on a part LC will generate Gcode for alll of them otherwise you end up piecing the multiple steps together
and need to add the rapids to the code. Your choice on how you want to do it.
RICH