I tried it as well but couldn’t do it. Too stupid for that. I now use F-Engrave, which works pretty well too and seems a lot easier. 
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Funny!
I went the opposite route.
I used F-Engrave first and it worked but seemed overly complicated. This time I used Estlcam with this technique and it worked great.
On the plus side…it’s fantastic that there’s more than one option.
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I did it like you did with Estlcam and the starting depth, but I wanted to do a cutting board with 6mm deep inlays and 3mm DOC in one go, so the option to out the starting depth at -2mm was out. I ran the program twice then, once “normal”, once with 2mm starting depth. It did work but took a looooong time. 
Going to use your technique for a project with a 2mm deep carving. Will keep you posted.
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It seems to work well for those shallow depths, with the only downside being that large inlays really, really fuck you over if your machine isn’t completely square. I cut 25x20cm inlay and it just would not fit. I then cut out the middle part and glued them separately and it worked (at least I think it worked, didn’t see the result yet). But see the picture: the gap is 2mm wide on one side, 0mm on the other one, so my machine is off by 0.5mm which does not matter for small inlays but for big ones it does. Hmpf. So next jobs will be divided from the start or, like this, cut later to make it fit. (Now don’t tell me to fix it not being square, 0.5mm is nothing I think I can fix. :D)
Looks good so far, but does not fit… Uff.
If you zoom in on this one you can see the gaps I am talking about. Maybe it’s even a little more than 0.5mm.
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You could try the “diagonal flip” method that will be less sensitive to squareness problems. It is sensitive to overall dimensional problems if X and Y don’t have the same scale, but the overall size is easier to get precise.
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Hah!
I won’t tell you to fix the 0.5mm
I think I don’t understand how would f-engrave do better on this. My thought was that it was effectively doing the same thing, just coded differently.
That said, my inlay had lines that were 1mm or less.wide so 0.5mm out would be a problem for me. I’ve also seen some videos where they do the large inlays and they also seem to break up the process into smaller sections.
Probably prudent
Post pics when you get it opened up!
It does not, my wording wasn’t great. Sorry.
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Oh, I remember that post in the back of my head. I somehow can’t get it to work in my head? Bottom right is just mirrored, top right is diagonal, is it?
Yes. Instead of mirroring along a horizontal or vertical axis, it’s like drawing a 45 degree diagonal mirror, and flipping relative to that diagonal mirror.
This is equivalent to mirroring horizontally or vertically and then rotating the flipped one by 90 degrees. Horizontal flip and 90 degree rotate is simple to do in Inkscape or whatever artwork manipulation program, whereas diagonal flip might not be easy, but conceptually that is what you are aiming for.
The direction of the rotation doesn’t matter. The 45 degree flip line can be +45 or -45 and it will work either way.
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Thanks, that helped.
Great tutorial I have used both Estlcam and F engrave, I did an inlay with F engrave that turned out great.
For those wanting to use either a big help is to understand why things are done it the order them are. There are very good YouTube videos explaining the process which really help to clear things up and help you learn how and why they work.
If you CNC table will not cut accurately it is because it is not rigid enough or you need to recalibrate your steps per
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Interesting…
If the cuts were accurate that shouldn’t be physically possible. At a certain depth the insert piece is larger than the recess you’re embedding it into.
Unless the insert is bottoming out. But that shouldn’t happen either if depth is 2mm and start level is 1. Should be a 1mm gap less the amount the wood squishes further in.
hmmm…
It happens because of it not being square and the piece being mirrored. Small pieces should not be a problem though.
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Sometimes it’s a good idea to cut apart larger plugs into smaller pieces for clamping, but obviously that’s not going to work on a perimeter like that. Was that with a horizontal/vertical flip, or a 45* flip?
Without, just a normal mirror. Want to try that rotating trick next time.
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Might be time to put together an inlay instruction page. That tip feels like a very valuable one. I kept imagining a flip and rotate but the 45 didn’t occur to me.
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I still don’t fully understand why it is supposed to work. My head does not like to think about it… The more I am interested in seeing how it works out. And I need time to do both in one go. 
It is kind of the opposite of marking a large square and measuring the diagonals to check for square, in this case you flip it to use the same diagonal. Very clever.
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