Hey everyone!
I'm in the final phases of testing on a custom hand held pendant controller for use with EMC!
I tried to use keyboards, mini keyboards, and even game pad controllers to control my homemade CNC router using EMC, but I didn't like the feel or ease of use of any of those options.
I just happen to be a Mechanical engineer who works very closely with Electrical engineers who also love homemade CNC. So we put our heads together and designed and built a custom pendant designed to work with EMC2!
Everyone who tries it wants one, because as those of you who have used a pendant before know it really changes the way you interact with your machine!
Once you load a G-code file into EMC2 you don't have to touch your keyboard or mouse again with all the features this pendant has on it!
You can home your machine, jog your machine, adjust jogging speed, adjust program speed, pause, start, stop, Estop, Spindle on and off and two aux on and off controls are available!
The body of the pendant is made from HDPE, the top plate is aluminum and the buttons are urethane. It is a very robust pendant that doesn't feel "cheap" which adds a little confidence when controlling a several hundred pound machine with it!
Here is a picture of the finished pendant:
Is this something people would be interested in? Our plan if so is to launch a campaign on Kickstarter. Once the campaign is complete we will make the entire design open source and free to use for anyone.
The kickstarter will have fully complete pendants for ~$80, down to just the PCB's and rubber button set for those who wish to machine the case and assemble the PCB and program the micro controller themselves.
Feed back on this project is appriciated, we wont do it if nobody wants it! Thanks!
-Jerome Miles