Milling Tool for Excellon not usable

[EOA-electronics]

Hi, I’m using Version 8.994 and just found out, that the “Milling Tool” for Excellon Objects is not availlable. The Button is greyed out (see screenshot attached), and I can’t find it in the Tools Menubar Entry.
Currently I’m unable to create milling jobs for holes larger than my normal tools, which is pretty annoying.
Please add this tool as soon as possible, or re-add the old Excellon-Object window, until the new milling tool is done.
Other than that I really like the new concept of organizing tools and objects.

Thank you very much, Ben.

[Marius Stanciu]

Hi Ben,
I know that what is in front is the most obvious but you should click the Utilities button that is just bellow the not-yet-enabled Milling button. You will find what you search for.
In my working copy, using the Milling Plugin (grayed out in the 8.994) will not only mill the outline of the bigger hole (like it is done in the Utilities) but it will actually mill the whole hole starting from the center of hole and progressing toward the edge.
Best regards,
Marius

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[EOA-electronics]

Hi Marius,
thank you for your fast replay. I’m not at home right now, but I will try it later.
On your screenshot it looks like the Milling Plugin is already working, and I like the approach of cutting from the inside out pretty well. Is there a way for me to already get this new unstable version, or activate the button if it’s already in 8.994?

Thank you very much, Ben.

[Marius Stanciu]

Hi Ben,
There is no installer (for Windows) yet, you can run the unstable version only from the sources and there are some outstanding issues like: units change to Imperial is not working, the Tools Database is not working, some other features here and there are not working yet.
Here are the sources for the latest commit:
https://bitbucket.org/marius_stanciu/flatcam_beta/get/Beta_8.995.zip
As for how to run from sources, I’ve published a video on YouTube covering this issue.

Best regards,
Marius

[EOA-electronics]

Hi, I tried your solution for milling in 8.994 and it works perfectly!
As far as 8.995 goes: I'm really looking forward to it, but at the moment without the Tool Database it doesn’t work for me.
Keep it up!

Thank you very much.
Best regards, Ben.

[Jonathan Wheeler]

EOA-electronics, how did you enable the Milling in 8.994?

[EOA-electronics]

You don’t really have to enable it. But I found out that all the bugs I reported, and many more, are just present when running FlatCAM on Windows. I would recommend to run it from Source in Ubuntu. I did that too, and all bugs were magically resolved ;-). If you don’t have a Machine running Ubuntu, a VM also works great.

Note: Make sure when cloning the repository to checkout the ‘Beta’ branch ('master is standard') to get Version 8.994.

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[Jonathan Wheeler]

Its grayed out when I run the 8.994 Beta on Windows. The most recent commit on the Beta branch on Bit bucket is from February 2022. Is that the same commit you’re using?

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The milling too is enabled in 8.995, but when I ask the milling tool to do inside or outside offsets, it always does the “path” offset. It also doesn’t give me options for a feed rate in the XY direction. My final work around was to adjust the size of the drill hole in flatcam so that when I use the “path” offset, the actual drill diameter plus the hole diameter in flatcam equals the real hole diameter I want to end up with. In order to get the XY feed set correctly, I manually edited the G code using a text editor’s “replace all” setting.

It may be hard to get an Ubuntu environment on a work computer, but it’s worth a shot.

[Marius Stanciu]

Hi,

Its grayed out when I run the 8.994 Beta on Windows

It’s grayed out because there was nothing functional at that moment behind. If it was not grayed out then people would have clicked on it, tried that and would have gotten a hard crash.

It also doesn’t give me options for a feed rate in the XY direction.

Fixed in the latest commit on my Bitbucket repository. It was an oversight.

when I ask the milling tool to do inside or outside offsets, it always does the “path” offset.

This seems to be fixed on my fork of FlatCAM and when I will finish the work on this version I will make the upload to the place where people are looking, meaning here, on this repo. In the meantime you can always try the changes there although as said above, there are bugs and missing functionality for the moment (I don’t have the time for FlatCAM currently).

BR,
Marius

[성브르노]

Hi Marius

Thanks your effort for more smart FLATCAM.

Is there any time schedule to open the upgraded version with Availabled Milling function ?

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Thanks

Quilan

[Marius Stanciu]

Hi Quilan,
I am in the middle of some rather big changes so I really don’t have an answer to your question, only that I hope to start working again on this project soon.
Best regards,
Marius