My first experience and issues

MillMage Software Questions
1

(Copied from the Lightburn Questions.)

I’m a hobbyist creating acoustic guitars. I’m always looking for simple options for my CNC, as I mainly use it to create templates. Fusion, VCarve, Freecad, they are all great, but too overloaded for my needs. Therefore, checking out millmage.
First impression is a clean interface. I like that. However, there are some initial quirks:

I’m from NL, and when you set up your material, the dialog behaves weirdly.
If I enter 450 mm, then it goes well and set to 450,00
When I enter 450,00 then the value is changed to 10.000,00 mm
When I enter 450.00 then the value is changed to 450,00

In the designer, the radius dialog sometimes behaves strangely. Up/down arrows add sometimes one, then 100. It is inconsistent, as it occurs occasionally.

When you zoom in/out, you cannot recover the original viewport. You cannot scroll the image into place; there are no scrollbars in the design panel. The upper bar where the xy coordinates are shown was completely unresponsive (disabled).

The next part is just a small description of what I tried, the videos are sparse, so it is very likely that I’m missing some things:

I tried to model a guitar shape. In other software, I can create two circles for the lower and upper bout, add a small circle for the waist, and draw a line between them, showing the body shape I designed. Could not find a similar function, so I started with two circles on a centerline, merged them, and was hoping I could change the sharp inner angle into a rounded corner with the radius I need. The radius tool did not work. I could select one or more points, but the sharp, rounded corner (the point where two circles touch) remained the same. I also tried edit nodes, but that didn’t work either.
If someone has an idea how to perform this, please let me know. Perhaps I wanted too much for this version.

Besides that, the IDE looks neat, it is great that the parameters of the CNC are explained animated, great feature imho, as in the beginning I was puzzled by the amount of parameters and what they meant. I can see myself working with this tool, but unless I’m doing things completely wrong, not in this current version.

1 Like
2

This is completely done via mouse. Hold the mouse wheel down and drag the workspace. No scrollbars needed. If you want to see the full workspace again, click this button:
grafik
(the button left of it will also make you drag the workspace with the left mouse button only).

3

are you sing core or an RC can you up load screen shots or even the file to get a better understanding , if understanding you correctly, i would use scissor tool cut lines you don’t want Re the numbers can you show screen shot of area once they auto join , than use node tool to alter curve or add additional smaller circle at cross over to create curve and remove with sissors

4

@misken: Thank you, found the function.

5

gitaar
gitaar633×741 26.7 KB

Above is an abstract from freecad. It works, but not very convenient. On https://aducom.com/dl/g1.mp4 you see a small video trying to change the model. I have no clue how to smoothen the sharp edges. I can understand that I can insert a circle and try to match and then delete lines. But that is also quite fiddly? Will try though.

regards, ALbert

6

just thought of another way , draw ur 2 circles , use the pencil tool , click S before drawing which creates a curve,

20260302_080601
20260302_0806011920×2560 1.77 MB

click start point on 1 circle click again mid point and than on to 2nd circle do same on other side of circles , use scissor tool , to cut out centre,

2026-03-02 08.06.27
2026-03-02 08.06.271920×2560 2.23 MB

and than you can edit curve from in nodes

2026-03-02 08.06.46
2026-03-02 08.06.461920×2560 2.05 MB

7

Thank you. I tried to follow your idea. I started with two circles in overlap and merged them. Then I tried to apply a new circle and match that with the ‘8’. Deleted the lineparts which actually works fine. However, it is virtual impossible to get the dimensions perfect. A guitar simply needs to be fluent in its curves :wink: It might be helpful if I could select a part of the curve and apply a spline or something similar. But I couldnt. However I haven’t given up yet. Thank you for your input.

8

no stress,

totally get the fluent curves,

as unsure of ur experience with LB or MM with editing nodes,

what i generally do is go along said line and where its to straightest ill click S to turn into more of a curve than stretch out the little blue lines on the nodes, don’t know their proper name.

than under edit -optimise selected shape ,enable smooth source shapes and play with slider

there probably is an easier /quicker way that I’m unaware of

for real precise drawings I use freecad it can be daunting at 1st learning it . I picked it up in less than a day, learning the basics of doing 2D drawing an than export it as DXf in to MM

1 Like
9

Thank you again. I’ve been using FreeCad for a long time for my 3D printer. It has been a journey of many issues, as the product was not stable at all back then. That significantly improved. But it is so overloaded with functions that making complex shapes is not that easy. For simple stuff, it is not an issue, and tbh, I really like the parametric approach. There is a radius in MillMage, but I was not able to set it. Yes, you can set width and height. For Cad/cam it is a different workflow, and after creating a job, changes to the origin do not automatically go through in the job itself; you have to recreate each operation again. That is probably my fault, but the cam operation is very complex, with many, many menus. I’m looking for something more simple. I like the graphical approach to setting up my CNC in MM, which shows what I’m actually doing instead of setting all kinds of parameters in menus and, if not found, in property editors. If you can figure out what the actual parameter means or does by the way. If things in your operations fail, then you might have overlooked a stupid parameter. So actually, I’m trying to find a tool to design my templates outside of FC. But the current release of MM is 0.8, so it is not finished yet. And for what I see now, there are many things I like, but unfortunately, it is not usable for me yet. Perhaps later.

1 Like