I’m cutting a car design that is very 3d and doesn’t really have a top as the first operation removes material to make it round etc. I need to change endmills though so what’s the best way when working on a not flat part of zero out the z between endmill changes?
One option is to solve this in the cam and make sure you have a known stock and set z= 0 off of the waste board, then you’ll be projecting off the wasteboard from the cam
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I’m using Fusion 360, I can probably do this but why does everyone always zero of the stock, I feel like there is some issue with no doing this?
the “best” solution is a nice bitsetter that Carbide3D makes
but short of that, the other option is to put the Z zero at the wasteboard (F360 can do this but I admit not using F360 so I don’t know how to help you with that)… I assume your wasteboard is going to stay around. If you’re unsure of the flatness of your wasteboard, just mark a dot with a sharpy so you can zero always at the same spot
the reason you zero normally on the stock is that typically you carve some depth into the stock, and there is a lot of deviation in height of stock (put caliper on a 3/4" stock… chances of really getting 0.7500 inch are close to zero)… and you care more about the accuracy of much you remove than you care about how much you keep
but if you carve the top away anyway in 3D carving that argument doesn’t really hold and setting zero at the wasteboard is just fine if not better
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One solution to this is to cut off and keep a part of the original billet. You place it next to the material you want to mill and use it so you can set your Z zero. I’ve done that several times and it is effective.
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I zeroes off the wasteboard and that works well, I’ll do that for these tricky parts until that doesn’t work I guess. 
Thanks
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Sounds like a job for the BitSetter!
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