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AndrewMawson
06-01-2017, 10:51 AM
I'm re-vamping a second hand plasma table, and for jogging it around conveniently while sorting it I bought one of these 'wireless numeric pads' :

20232

I must say for under £9 delivered it's excellent, and so handy being able to walk round the table with it, but it got me thinking - why not replace the normal keyboard and mouse with wireless ones to save those pesky trailing wires?

Now one obvious potential problem is electrical interference from the arc, but I can't test that at the moment, as the table is in the 'clean workshop' being refitted where I don't have the means to power the Hypertherm.

...so... does anyone use a wireless keyboard with their table - if so are there any ill effects.

AndrewMawson
18-01-2017, 10:12 PM
Well to answer my own question now my table is back in the welding shop where I can use it, the wireless keypad works splendidly and is a HUGE help jogging to the start of cut etc. Now there is no need to use it when the plasma arc is established of course and that is when the main source of interference is present.

Certainly well worth the money

Jonathan
19-01-2017, 02:45 PM
I recently got a Logitech K400 keyboard from eBay (about £20):

20408

The page up/down keys being combined with the arrow keys would normally be annoying, but I find it works really nicely when jogging the machine. You can jog and home from the same buttons ... and as a last resort it includes a mouse.

paulus.v
19-01-2017, 06:41 PM
Why not a gamepad?
Especially for those with big table CNC, a wireless gamepad is the best input device you can dream for. The nice free plugin (http://joakim.dk/joypad/) is completely customisable. Beside the variable speed jogging, which is the most useful thing, I use it for reset, to start/pause/stop g-code, home all or individual axes, zero individual axes, combined step/continuous jogging when I'm manually surfacing something, increase/decrease feed/speed, etc.