joystick

[phe259]

hi all
does anybody now if its possible to use a joypad to control jogging in turbocnc

[Oldmanandhistoy]

Hi

I do not think so, or at least I can not see how looking at the Turbocnc manual.

There will probably be other ways to do it, with some fancy electronic device or the like but I can’t help you there.

Maybe someone else can jump in and educate us both.

John

[dkowalcz]

Sorry, not yet, you'd have to modify the source to do this...

It'd be pretty trivial to add joystick support for the jogging - I'll see if I can score one and play around with using it to jog.

Are you figuring on doing XY only with the stick, or maybe change the active axis with the buttons? XY with the stick, Z by button? Help me out here on what you'd like the interface to be like...

[vacpress]

Another, very easy way to do this is to just wire a digital game-pad type controller right to the keyboard inputs.. You can easily scavenge an old keyboard and take the 'Keyboard multiplexer' out of it.. Make a chart of what combonations of what leads create what character, and then use that to make what ever sort of interface you desire. Any of the Turbo CNC keycommands could be accessed.. Get an old laptop, take it apart and mount it in an enclosure, modify a keyboard to access the turbocnc functions, and you have yourself an interesting, and probably usefull machine controller... With an LCD and hardware interface.. Probably cost less than $100 if you do it right...

PS, i am doing this right now.. I will post pics when its in progress(currently looking for 2-4 P233 or faster laptops..)

[Madclicker]

Use an Ultimarc board.

Ultimarc

[vacpress]

I mentioned this device before at some point, and ive actually purchased one. However, I have not tried to use it with Mach software.. I did use it with solidworks though. It uses some windows program to let you program all the buttons, slider, and 2 knobs to program buttons, macros, keystrokes, etc.. Its usb, and it costs $20.00

In solidworks I had the slider zooming, the shuttle knob Rotating and Panning, and the other various buttons were mapped to extrude, cut extrude, surface loft, etc... I didnt find it usefull really, so i stopped using it right away. But! It did work well.

I will try it out eventually.. There is a chance something about the driver it uses interferes with mach... I dunno. I wouldnt know how to check

$20.00 USB Controller Board