I agree that some kind of handwheels are needed. Maybe a joystick, but I never tried it. It would of course have to be an analog one so not only the direction can be controlled, but also the speed. And separately for X and Y, so any diagonal move can be done. That's a pro. The con is that a handwheel is more familiar.
Either of them can be put in a separate box and placed where it is easy for you to observe the tool and workpiece. An Estop button should of course be included on this box. Anyhow, that's refinement. For now I bring the keyboard with me around the mill. It gets soaked with suds and chips, but the cheap ones are $5 each, so no big deal.
A handwheel can be an encoder into a microcontroller that just emits step and direction impulses depending on where you moved the handwheel. This would have the same "feel" as a handwheel without the force feedback that you have with a mechanically coupled handwheel. There are a couple of electronic problems by driving the motors by handwheels. They will generate voltages back into the drives. They don't like that. Sometimes to the extent that they get p***ed and quit working.
Disconnecting the motors from the drives during hand-milling is too much of a hassle, and doing it is easy to forget.
Have to go back milling. I'm squaring off a cast iron stump with no initial shape. It's a pig to clamp down!  |