I am trying to design an inlay where the female inlay and plug have sharp corners. It appears as if the inlay tool only produces rounded corners. Am I missing a setting in the toolpath design? I am using carbide create with my Shapeoko 5 pro and am doing inlay designs all the time.
This is the type of pocket I can do with carbide create.
How sharp are you expecting for the corners? You do know you cannot make square corners with a round milling tool?
Hi Mike, Carbide create is able to produce perfectly sharp corners in a female inlay with a 60 deg V bit using the Vcarve toolpath ( similar to the female inlay tool in Millmage). I have done dozens of them. The corners are created by the toolpath starting at the edge of the corner at zero depth and then moving away from the corner into the pocket and increasing the depth simultaneously. The corners are done as the last part of the toolpath. This is all done by the carbide create software. Below is a zoomed in pocket of a chessboard I made.
True, but you do know MillMage is not capable of vcarve motions yet? From what I read, it is in the plans to add it later.
I wasn’t aware of that. I saw the inlay male and inlay female and assumed it was their version of v carve. You know what the saying is about ASSUME!
Thanks for letting me know. I’ll wait for the annoucement.
You might be able to simulate this using your own designed operation, maybe using a plunge ramp. But I agree vcarve cannot arrive too soon!
At present, the Male and Female inlay options are done using an endmill, and as such can only be rounded.
The option you’re looking for is a V-Carve inlay, which is planned for when the V-Carving support is completed.
Being a complete novice to the CNC world, I have been struggling trying to comprehend the logic used in Millmage’s inlay operations. Alot of the confusion on my end was not knowing the difference between 2.5D and 3D carving.
I understand the difference now. And it seems to me the operations and logic are geared to the ability of doing 3D carving or v-carving, but the full capabilities aren’t there yet. And because of that, a complete novice like myself was left out in the woods trying to figure out the best possilbe way to get the best results with an inlay using Millmage.
I had to give up trying to understand the logic of the current operations. I hope to one day comprehend it. But like I always say, “There’s always another way.” With the current limitations of Millmage, I am not worrying with inside or outside the line engraving for my inlays. Instead, I cut the line for both the male and the female. BUT, I have created a calulator that creates the perfect offset needed to create the perfect fitting inlay every time.
It works with v-bits, straight endmills, and taper ball-nose. The v-bits and the straight endmills have been tested and work perfectly. I have yet to test the taper ball-nose. And now that I understand, for most 2.5D inlays and flat-bottom pockets, a flat end mill or standard V-bit is usually simpler, faster, and more precise. The tapered ball-nose mainly benefits projects where you want subtle rounding or smoother transitions, not strictly necessary for standard inlays. I will most likely be omitting the ball-nose from my calculator in future versions.
If you have a the known dimensions of either the insert or the pocket. You insert the value for the knowns and it gives you the perfect offset for the path you need, male or female.
I now understand this is only ideal for 2.5D environments. And sharp corners will not work. I take that into consideration with the path before engraving.
I am getting excellent results. Tight fits and no noticeable gaps. But it is no subtitute for v-carving.
My hopes are that as my knowledge and capabilities of the CNC increases, so will Millmage. A journey that I am excited to finally be on.
In an attempt to clear up any confusion, the current implementation of the inlay tools is to allow you to produce male and female versions of shapes that fit correctly within each other.
An an example, if I have this text:
Producing a pocket from that shape will result in the outer corners rounded like this, because the end-mill has a radius and can’t get all the way into the corners:
Conversely, cutting out the shape results in the inner corners rounded the same way:
Trying to put one of those shapes into the other obviously won’t work. Look at the inner tip of the V, specifically - it’s very sharp in the pocket version, and very round in the cut-out version.
Compare that to these shapes, done using the Inlay operations, but using the exact same source shapes:
All the rounding matches, so all you need to do cut out the bottom one and insert it into the top one, and everything will match up. It’s not a V-Carve inlay, and it was never claimed to be. 
