Stan,
I'm a little embarrassed about all the grammatical errors in my last post. Please excuse me. I was working off my phone sometimes those damn little keys... and the little font... and well... whatever other excuses I can come up with...
The "A3" is a different style pierce than we talked about before. It is used to blast a super large hold in the steel before you start cutting. It works well but is only for applications where you can put a lead in line the length of the material thickness (approximately). If you chose to go that route, you need to make your settings for it on the bottom line of your pierce page "103". Go full power full freq and full duty. Also, for this one, you should really use 0.200" for you nozzle gap. And yes, you need to use the M105 for this style pierce. The M103A3 turns the height sensor off during the routine and you need the M105 to turn it back on. Further more, the x and y after the M105 describes you lead in length. If you look at a normal program, you see the traverse move, G00X41.0000Y27.2936, then you see the pierce, M103, then you see the lead in, G01X41.5000Y27.2936. Then after that you may have more G01 or G02,G03 etc... The idea, in this example the difference between the G00 and the G01 positions is your lead in. The new program looks like:
M100
M102
E4
G00X41.000Y27.2936
M103A3
M105X41.5000Y27.2936
G01....
G02....
Now that's the right way to do it. If you want to cheat, I have seen people put a B0.05 right after the A3. It doesn't look as cool but at least the height sensor gets turned back on.
A quick and dirty test to benchmark is a hole and square program.
G112X0.0Y0.0I1.0A3
G111X0.0Y0.0I2.8A3
In this example, the M105 is built into the G112 and G111 macro. This will give you an idea of what the correct set up should look like when its cutting.
P.S. This may be tacky, but we live in a capitalist society. As much as I would like to, I can not solicit my services on this forum so at least give me a fuchsia star if you find my comments helpful.