5-axis Breakout Includes Hand-Held Control Port & 3,4,5-axis Postion-Display Port

[LoveLearn]

Based on reading reports about previous years experience with optically-isolating breakout boards, we know their design strategy has generally stabilized and their reliability is now generally very good. Observable CNC machine performance differences caused by motor driver selection are wildly different. By contrast, observable CNC machine performance differences caused by breakout board selection are typically non-existent, small, or comparatively minor. I'm not including Smooth Stepper and similar command time buffering devices which can generate tremendous machine performance improvements.

During my recent search/selection process among currently-offered 5-axis breakout boards, I found the model HY-JK02-M board which, during the period of this writing, is being offered by various eBay and on-line vendors, some promising a 1-year guarantee. I consider their guarantee to be little better than a joke, but that promise adds weight to post-receipt performance test satisfaction covered by PayPal's fee structure. If a PayPal purchased device fails to perform as a seller's description promises, buyers can demand corrective action by the seller or money back. That's not a joke, and vendors know it.

So why, since I expect performance differences between various competing breakout boards will not be particularly significant, am I interested in this 5-axis breakout board? Because this specific board includes two extra port functions I've not seen offered by other consumer-grade priced interfaces.

One of those two is a port plug made to connect a hand-held 5-axis push-button controller with 4-axis speed-control screws, a spindle-power on/off button, separate axis led-indicator lights, Emergency Stop Button and an on/off switch. This hand-held control could be very handy for testing systems without even having a computer connected to the board's parallel port. I hope, but don't know if it could be used when the board is parallel-port-connected to a computer to "teach" useful CNC movement series. That could be very helpful in creating repetitive robotic task routines. I have in mind making a grasper-equipped robotic arm to unload machined parts from a mill and load new part blanks into an automatic clamping system before restarting the same milling machine cycle, over and over.

The other unusual port group is three ports designed to drive your choice of 3, 4, or 5-line axis position reporting display. According to sparse on-line descriptions I've found to date, those display boards enable motor-step to axis-linear travel calibration in centimeters or inches for each axis. So you can calibrate each of the five display's reported linear travel dimensions even if each axis drives different down-stream components. Sure, your CNC computer program already provides that information. But this extra display is still a very nice option.

I ordered a pair of these 5-axis breakout boards and one of these compatible plug-in 5-axis hand-held controls. I'd like to order one of the compatible plug-in 5-axis digital display cards, but so far I have only seen photos of it in 5-axis breakout board offers. I've written to several of those offering parties asking if they can sell to me the photographed 5-axis display card, but so far, none of them have said they have it available. Lots of vendors are offering compatible 3-axis and 4-axis digital display cards, but I'd prefer to pay a little more to get the 5-axis display. Does anyone know a vendor offering these 5-axis break-out board displays?

Be aware that very similar-appearing hand-held controls and digital displays configured to work with TA6065 motor controller cards are NOT plug-in compatible with 5-axis breakout boards. They appear similar but according to offer descriptions, they are not the same and not compatible.

Does anyone have any insight into the issue of whether or not a break-out board-controlling hand-held controller can be used in "teach mode" to feedback information into existing software packages, as is common on more expensive industrial grade CNC machine systems? 3D scanning has been enabled through machine position feedback. So I think this hand-held control might work as a teaching mode data input.
John