RE: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO]floating z axis

>That's an interesting approach to cutting a board! I'm not quite sure
>what you meant by your statement "if you get islands...aviod isolation
>problems...reorder".

If you cut the tracks on the outside of the board first you could create
areas of copper that you still have to route, but that aren't connected
to the ground wire anymore.

Imagine this. The routing tip is POSITIVE. The whole surface of the PCB
is
grounded by a wire connected to one corner. You detect when the routing
tip
touches the PCB by seeing when current starts flowing as you lower the
tip.

Now you cut a circle in the centre of the PCB. Everything outside the
circle
is still grounded by the wire, so the detection keeps working, but
inside the
circle the copper is not grounded anymore, so in there you cannot route
tracks.

You need to sort the cuts to ensure that everything inside the circle
(island)
is cut before you isolate that area.

On simple boards it's easy, on complex boards it can be hard.

>I get "ordered" Gerber files from my experiments with Eagle, and then I
>convert them to Gcode.

Different type of ordering than what I meant.

>However, a trace may start at one side of the
>board, and go around the board and end up on the other side!

Yes, but that is a collection of short cuts, and you do compensation per
cut. I used to split linear cuts up to ensure that the machine never
ran more than 10mm without re-compensating.

>The ordering that you mention (I think) only helps to shorten the G00's

You are talking about something else.

You mean ordering to minimize the time the machine runs. That is exactly
what
you don't want to do, since that almost certainly will create islands.

N.