4-axis edm Diamond guide z-offsets

Hi

I'm building 4 axis wire edm at school and we are at the point of making a control for the machine.
How in general 4-axis machine diamond guide offsets are handled? The upper guide height obviously affects the tilting and also the tilting point of lower guide cant be right at the surface of the part being cut. I made a program with mastercam to cut tapered part and it treated it as the tilting point of upper and lower guide are right at the part surface.
So at what point do you input the information on whats your guide tilting point offsets? Do you need to know what they will be and program them on your cam? or is there some complicated offsets on the machine which can compensate for the fact that guides or not right at the surface of the part being cut.

On the Sodick EDMs I run they have a "To Table" distance which is from the lower guide to the table surface, and a To program distance which is from the table to the, depending on program, the master profile(?) of the part ussually the top profile. The control then interprets the program to run the wire thru the upper and lower programmed geometry, regardless of its relation to the guides.

Does the machine need to know for how thick plate the code has been made. Because of offset of 1mm in U or V axis will of course result in different angle if the distance between lower and upper geometry is different. Like if it has been programmed for 1mm sheet 1mm ofsett will result in 45deg taper but in thicker piece the taper will be smaller.

Is this making of tapers usually done by U and v offsets or can some machines understand if you just input desired angle and will the machine cut that angle no matter how low or high upper diamond guide is set to be?

So at the factory the guide distances were setup by the builder of the machine.

The "thickness" of the workpiece is set by the program distance and the table to next. I have yet to every have to do any 4axis cutting beyond taper compensation for wire wear.

The machine knows the relationship of the guides to the set Z axis height for the upper, and the distance from the table to the lower guide. You program based on the profile "table to profile" and also set the "table to next" if the part is above the table surface. Then no matter what angle you program or z-axis height you zero at the machine does its best to guide the wire along the angle you programed.

Search for the Sodick manual and it gives alot more information how sodick does it.