I could use a bit of insight.
I'm sure most are aware that there is a method of creating circuit boards using isolation routing. Special software creates the gcode. An engraving cutter removes the copper from a blank circuit board leaving the familiar copper traces.
One of the difficulties with this is that the blank circuit boards are not always perfectly flat so the routing depth varies as you move across the board which makes the remaining traces vary in width (sometimes leaving nothing at all if they are thin or close together).
Various approaches have been used to minimize this problem. I'm aware of most of them, even one attempt to pre-probe the whole board to build up a z-axis map and use these values in a post porcessor to modify G-code to adjust the Z-axis moves to compensate.
After reading a recent post on Plasma cutting using Mach I realized that apparently some sort of "pre-probing" is done for proper depth on-the-fly before every Z move of the plasma cutting head.
I'm wondering if someone can explain this to me (Mach software mods required, how it works) and if they think this might work for the circuit board milling process. I've tried searching on this but it pretty difficult to find all the info all in one place.
Thanks
Sage