I have a laser welder that I added a motion system to. Gecko steppers and 540 box, Mach 3 and a lot of machining to get it all together and working. Everything worked fine, but the mouse and keyboard were pretty bad as input devices.
I read some good things about the pendants that Vista CNC sells and ordered their P2S because it has the ability to command "cycle start", "stop", "rewind", etc.
The pendant is pretty nicely made. The housing is plastic but sturdy, the switches work nicely and the MPG works just like the ones on $100K cnc machines.
But I've run into a glitch that REALLY needs to be fixed before I can use it.
I have a program to laser weld a part that requires the use of filler wire. This means that stop points (M1s) are needed in the program to get the wire in place before it starts the feed move.
My problem is that when I use the "cycle start" button on the pendant while the optional stop (M1) is on in Mach 3, it loses it's mind and goes into rapid traverse mode! And it stays that way until I exit and reload Mach 3.
If it had been a milling machine there would have been lots of broken pieces.
Has anyone else encountered this problem?
Mike