the life of one robot

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Pendant - miser style

After researching the options for pendants, I quickly found myself shying away from all the configuration complexity and expense of joysticks and 3rd party pendants.


I settled on buying this beauty along with a 32ft usb extension cord.  This set me back 30 dollars including shipping.  If figure I can remap a few keys in mach3 and maybe even make a few stickers.


#excitedaboutthesmallstuff


Friday, January 6, 2012

Making the switch



After sometime of test cuts, configuration changes, reading, researching, etc; I’ve decided to switch to mach3.  


The short of it

  • there’s a greater amount of people using and therefore extending mach3 with the routines I seek (auto-zero Z, homing, 
  • the standard scripting language is like second nature to me (not sure if I like confessing a strong knowledge of vbscript but... there ya have it.)

Originally I stayed away from mach3 given the dizzying UI and overwhelming options only to find myself knee deep in emc2 config, however yesterday’s design session brought me to the realization I really don’t need to focus on all the new stuff of emc2 2.5 (gladevcp) as I’d prefer to spend my time making sawdust.


Ger21 from cnczone.com made a beautiful screen layout which which greatly reduces your sense vertigo when looking at mach3.  It includes a few strategies for tool changes and probing.  You can find it here: http://home.comcast.net/~cncwoodworker/2010.html for a mere 20 dollars.