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Pendant for my CNC

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Pendant for my CNC

Postby DaveL » 20 Apr 2022, 13:35

I have an Ooznest WorkBee CNC with a Duet controller, which is a stand alone board, mounted on the CNC and its controlled using a web based interface from a laptop in my case.
This works well for the machining of parts but is a bit cumbersome when setting the position of the cutter ready to probe for the zero start position, most commercial CNC systems come with a pendant that can be used to move the machine quickly to the require position, that's not standard with the WorkBee. I have seen youtube videos of a few different pendants that people have made and are sometimes sell, via facebook, I don't do facebook. They all appear to be £100+ and provide endless options above and beyond what I would like, then I stumbled across this video

Well I have use Arduino's for a few different things so set about building one. Mike had a switch that raised on lowered the tool to allow a dust hood to be fitted, I found that that function didn't work. There was a small error in the code, I fixed that but the decided I did not need that option but I used a macro to return the tool to above the x,y zero position so modified the code to do just that.
Here is my version.
pendant.jpg
(202.62 KiB)

I added a clip on the front of the machine so I had somewhere to park the pendant once I had finished the setup for the job.
pendat_stored.jpg
(176.1 KiB)

And the best bit, it cost just under £25 to make.
Regards,
Dave
My tool kit is almost complete, only a few more to get.
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DaveL
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Re: Pendant for my CNC

Postby DaveL » 20 Apr 2022, 13:45

While working on setting up the pendant, I found there had been an update for the CNC Duet firmware, which added a few new useful features, one of which was a simple way to control the speed of my spindle directly from the Duet. I just need to add a converter to change the pulse width modulated signal the Duet produces to an analogue voltage that the VFD understood, they are a few pounds from ebay.
speed_control.jpg
(210.9 KiB)

The most time consuming part of this was getting the new cables in to the drag chain on the CNC.
Regards,
Dave
My tool kit is almost complete, only a few more to get.
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DaveL
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Posts: 1918
Joined: 21 Jul 2014, 21:07
Location: Sudbury, Suffolk
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Re: Pendant for my CNC

Postby Malc2098 » 20 Apr 2022, 15:27

Nice.
Malcolm
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