The basic milling workflow

Milling is the process of using rotating tools to modify a solid surface with the aim of creating a desired product. This process can be performed manually or using numeric tools (computers, or powerful circuits). Computer numeric control milling (CNC milling)  is a computer assisted discipline. As with any manufacturing process, the milling process has two distinct stages: Design and Manufacture. Since the design is in general performed using computer tools, it is called Computer Aided Design or simply CAD. On the other hand, since the manufacture is a computer assisted process, it is called Computer Aided Manufacture or CAM. Regardless of the type of product being created, the output of the Design process needs in general some preparation before it becomes useful for the tools that are used to manufacture. This process is called Preprocessing.

There are several different tools in Linux that can be used for each of these stages. Different tools suite different applications. With them you can produce circuit boards, metal pieces, plastic panels, jewerly, car pieces, and many more. Sometimes, using a good text editor such as vim or emacs can be enough for the preprocessing, however, sometimes you will need more powerful tools. There's a large community working in different tools that can be used in production to support each of the milling stages.

In this blog I'll be talking about programs, utilities and recommendations for milling in Linux.