After looking at the code closer, it was a bit goofy.
The Z made a jump at roughly every 256 lines ... from -.0625 to -.1125

Your friends v-cave sofware is an illegal copy.  There are some copies floating around on the net of the vectric software and they all have this problem.  They all work fine except for the z-axis which is set to constantly either ascend or descend from the intial dept set.  Vectric was smart and leaves out certain parts of the code for their software until you actually purchase it from them.  The correct post processor code is one of those pieces left out.

Keith

Well that explains that. I was going to buy it anyway, but thought I'd give it a try to see if it was as good as everyone says it is. And It is. I thought it was strange that my Cut2d ran steady and his VCarve didn't. Man, this was starting to drive me crazy.   Now I have to learn how to read G-code. Thank's for the help.

Would I be smart to buy the VCarve pro manual? I think the one they've got for sale is for 5.5, but do you think it would be a wise purchase anyway?

Thanks Mike

Hi Mike,

Glad you got it sorted and working OK.

The Vectric online help / manual / tutorials are pretty good and should answer any questions you have using VCarvePro. Alternately the Vectric forum is an excellent source of info for all their products.

(it has taken me some 18 months of savings to buy VCarve Pro and I don't have enough left for the manual   )

Tweakie.

I know what you mean. None of this stuff is cheap. But compared to some of the other software and the features this has, it's pretty reasonable for the money. It's all I'll probably ever need. But still didn't really want to spend the money on it right now. I've got a few sign orders to do, so really didn't have a choice. I used to freehand them. This will be nice not having to do that anymore.