Just downloaded Millmage last night for my CNC which I built in our makerspace.
Very impressed initially by the workflow; it’s exciting for beginner users to not have to jump between cad, aspire, cam, and sender programs.
I’m using a flexihal controller over ethernet with grblhal
Everything setup flawlessly with just a few clicks. Direct control working no issues.
Managed to find my way around most things, and setup the required macro. However after a bit of poking around I’m still unsure how to set WCS and see the coordinate tables.
I understand the ‘workpiece/project setup’ is G54 - This is the default shown. Machine coordinates aren’t shown. Hopefully this is correct? How do I then set say G54 55 G56 and alternate between workspaces and jobs? And how do I see that coordinate table and directly edit it?
I’m probably just missing a tab in the software, but I don’t see this in the docs.
You appear to be an experienced user, so I will spare you my typical Absolute Coordinates speech.
There is no table of work coordinate offsets in MillMage, at least for now. To see the G54 to G59 settings plus others, enter $# in the Console window. To change one, again in the Console window, enter G[xx] X[nnn], Y[nnn], Z[nnn] where xx=offset number and nnn=the offset value. In GRBL, the units are mm, but not sure for your situation.
Welcome to the Forum! You may see mention of Lightburn, but that is the laser version and father of the MillMage development screen. You got it right visioning MillMage as a CNC Project in a box. Feel free to come back to pose questions, or just to pick up new tips.
Many thanks for the quick reply and the welcome. I am acquainted with a couple of guys who know some of the team, and who has described them as ‘sharp and thoughtful’ - This [plus my prediliction to support open source and reasonable companies] and the lightburn integration makes it most useful for the makerspace. I’ve actually used lightburn before, messing around with a laser on the cnc (also grblhal, and we have a horrible chinese Ruida controller one that I attempt to avoid using. Building a MOPA is on the list, but they aren’t so cheap yet despite cheap kinematics.
I really do like the idea for our makers of being able to jump files between the laser and the cnc for their ops. Might even make some located wasteboards so they can keep their zeros. It’s a very neat feature.
I think being able to map tools/ops to colors is fantastic. Perhaps not for me, but to be able to say to a user “use blue for pocketing aluminium and load this 4mm 1f” and then it does everything for them, from misting to milling is awesome. Rather than, use this endmill at 24k rpm and 4500mm/min and 6mm doc and run mist etc. I’ve not looked into the atc side yet, but cant imagine its too hard to setup a nutcranker atc with say 4 most commonly used tools and abstract that part too.
GRBLHAL is very much like GRBL (just 32 bit,extended instructions, and much more hardware agnostic.) Users are still mostly hobbyists, the alternatives usually used would be linuxcnc, or occasionally masso/acorn. So stuff like units are the same, indeed mm.
I understand how to set WCS in console, but not yet how to tell millmage how to work in say, G56. (for rotary axis work as an example) It would be really neat if we were allowed to develop plugins for millmage, as I think this would be pretty quick to add. (Though that may be unlikely as it’s unavailable for lightburn.)
Anyway, quite excited. Spent the evening sprucing up my pneumatics systems and neumatic vice ready for some millmage fun.
Building a MOPA is on the list, but they aren’t so cheap yet despite cheap kinematics.