What should I be looking for when selecting an MPG dongle? I'm using a Gecko G540 and Mach 3.
I found 4 so far:
I'm leaning towards the Tormach knockoff 'Shuttle'. Main reason is, do you really need all those buttons that you see on the Chinese ones? Also I like the double wheel i.e. inner wheel is fine control, outer is rapid. I also like that it's on a cable. I don't really want wireless, recharging is the most annoying thing in the world I think. One question that comes to mind about it is on the Chinese ones, you have the Off position for the axes. Do MPGs generate pulses when a program is running? Do you really need the off position? There's obviously no off functionality on the Shuttle.
Can't do advanced edit for some reason, so I'll post my edit to the post above here.
I searched the forum for discussions on this issue but couldn't find any talk about MPG selection. Which is quite surprising! Maybe I searched wrong.
Also, what's the dealio with resolution? Most steppers seem to only like 0.001, 0.010, 0.100 and 1.000 as the options. But I can't remember what the figure is off the top of my head, but I doubt my CNC machine can do distances like those. Well specifically I'm curious about the 0.001. I didn't come up with this problem, that's from 5:40 from the final video that I attached.