Adding a manual pulse generator to my home CNC

[glentner]

Hello,
I have acquired a hand held manual pulse generator (I think that's what it's called) which I would really like to integrate into my home CNC mill for jogging the axis. The bad/good thing about the pulse generator is that apparently something electrical is broke on it (which is why they gave it to me). All of the knobs and the main turnwheel thing still operate fine in terms of mechanically. My idea was to use the exiting mechanical switches and wheel and wire them to "something" that could send an input into my machine control. The "something" is what I am looking for ideas on.

My mill is 3 axis with a xylotex stepper drive and running mach 3 software. My first (and only) idea was to hook up an encoder to the turnwheel and wire it into the computer because i believe the mach3 software can take an encoder input, although I'm not sure if that can then be used to manually jog the mill.

Any thoughts or suggestions???????
Thanks for the help.

[ger21]

Lots of info here
http://www.artsoftcontrols.com/MachC...itle=Main_Page

http://www.artsoftcontrols.com/MachC..._cheap_encoder

Also check the manual.