Handwheel Installation

[plateroomred]

I Have camsoft lite with a break out box and gecko drives and would like to hook up a handwheel from a Bridgeport boss nine controller,is this possible and if so, how?
Thanks,

[Ben Olson]

Assuming you have a regular handwheel configuration A,B,A+,B+,I ,5volts,ground

just wire it to the auxillary encoder input of your choosing and set the logic accordingly, they're normally 100 ppr so the setup value will be 400 ( Quadrature )

[plateroomred]

Thanks for the input.
Remember I have cnc lite with the 395 dollar stepperboard. It doe's have a fourth axis. But camsoft says it is not reliable for a handwheel. But they don't come right out and say it can't be done. The handwheel has three wires(it came from a bridgeport) would these go to the step, dir and 5v terminals on the stepper board? Also what would the logic look like to jog X,Y and Z. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

[camsoft]

For plateroomred,

To circumvent a lengthy discussion on the 4 axis stepper box and use of a handwheel (MPG).

It simply a matter of having a encoder type connection on the stepper box, to read the pulses from the hand wheel. The $395 4 axis stepper box does not have this connection to get pulse wheel generator feedback. Although other boards we offer do.

As for jogging routines. There are many styles and methods available to you. Depending on what other hardware you have in your package we could point you to various copy and paste logic routines to add physical Jogging Sticks, Physical jog buttons, Arrow key keyboard jogging or Video Game Joy Stick routines that all work with the stepper board.

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