V Carving Help - Going Insane!

Having an expensive learning experience tonight, first time using some Kingcolor HDPE. V-Carving driving me nuts. Need some advice on 2 signs I was attempting to make (both used 60 degree v bit).

On the ‘kissing booth’ sign:
My file was showing over 20,000 lines of gcode, seems crazy to me
There was 3 passes to carve the text - the last of which went way deeper than I edited (0.10 is what i wanted)
On the ‘S’ & ‘G’ it did some extra notch thing that jacked them all up - what is this about?

On my AT&T stadium sign:
The first pass on the text was exactly what i wanted, then it did it again and made it thicker and deeper! Why is this?
The stadium part I pocketed with a .250 square end mill, why did it start so deep in the middle?

Thanks for all the help!!

V-Carving adjusts the depth to get the width of your design.

Pictures will help.

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I’m afraid there’s no interaction with the V carve path and the pocket path. You can integrate the twain manually, see: Could use some guidance on creating a carve

Sorry - forgot to add them!

Looks mechanical.
Z axis have a loose pulley or loose belt?

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The basic points of adjustment for a machine are:

Also feeds and speeds may be a consideration: https://docs.carbide3d.com/support/#tooling-support and see https://www.precisebits.com/tutorials/calibrating_feeds_n_speeds.htm for a testing technique

Beyond that it’s usually a matter of Calibration and Squaring the Machine c.f., http://docs.carbide3d.com/shapeoko-faq/how-to-calibrate-the-machine-for-belt-stretch/

V carving is extermely sensitive to how the machine is zero’d in the Z direction. In the first picture, could be the material wasn’t completely flat on the machine. Also could be the material isn’t thick enough for the v-carve you’re trying to do. With that many non-circular curves, I’m not surprised it’s a very large file.

In the stadium one, it looks to be losing steps. Slow down the plunge.

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