Any thoughts on pendants?

[Robin Hewitt]

What buttons are actually useful on pendants?

I'm just designing one, thought I might do it Scalectrix fashion with buttons to select a direction and a lever to set the speed. I thought maybe click a button for single steps, but, like 5 microns? :heehee:

I left space on the mill control panel for a big knob, want the pendant to be dinky.

What would be your idea of the perfect pendant?

Feliz Navidad

Robin

[Swarfing]

Feliz Navidad et tu mi amigo et felix neuevo anno

Why not go wireless with tv type remote?

[graffian]

I wasn't sure what I would want. As I was in a hurry[not touched it since march] I installed a lot of the original Yasnac switches on new panels in the original pendant. Didn't give getting it all to work much though, do it now think about it later. They all seemed fairly usefull.
For the axis controls there are slew buttons, and an MPG. Rotary switches control resolution/speed/frequency and axis selection
I have the computer inside the pendant so stuck USB ports on it, flat screen monitor and the computer panel switches[stuck the reset and duplicate panel switches on the motherboard tray as well, well the reset won't be needed;-)]. I haven't labeled any of them yet and as I did it all over a year ago I have forgoten what's what. I added loads of stuff like coolant and oil pump overide and some LED's, gotta have a few LEDs, oh and speed and load meters for the spindle[also got spindle overrides]. Small and dinky, more like big and clunky.

[Robin Hewitt]

I to feel a terrible temptation to put too much on it, hence the question :whistling:

If I think about it logically, the pendant is only useful when I want to have my eyeballs close to the tool tip for positioning purposes.

To do that it needs buttons for Up, down, N, S, E and W.

Some kind of speed control would be handy.

Most everything else is more conveniently done by screen, keyboard and mouse.

Perhaps the only extra button that might ever be used is "Continue", although an "Aargh" could be handy.

Just fishing for ideas :beer:

[ptjw7uk]

Best thing I would wish for is an 'undo' button!
or
possibly 'I wouldnt do that!'

Bet Santa couldnt bring one!

Have a good day now!

Peter

[Tom]

This is the first time I've thought about it, but this is what I'd find useful.

3 Buttons:
E-stop
Pause
Play / Unpause

2 Buttons:
Jog +
Jog -

Rotary switch:
Off
Select x
Select y
Select z

Rotary switch:
Jog scale 0.01
Jog scale 0.1
Jog scale 1.0
etc

A headphone jack to connect my touchoff plate (and an LED to check it's working before it drives the cutter through the table because of a faulty connection)

2 more buttons:
Feed override - up
Feed override - down

Possibly 2 more buttons (but only if I can work out how to acknowledge the tool change screens in EMC2 from the pendant, without going back to the PC:
G92.2, and raise Z to zero to do a tool change
G92 to reset the co-ordinates, and re-start after tool change.

Hmm, yep, not so small and dinky either.
Have you seen this post on Anders Wallin's blog?
http://www.anderswallin.net/2006/11/jogging-emc2/