Mach3 Pendant

Darren Wright

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This week I ordered one of the wireless Mach3 pendants from ebay, which was shipped from Automation Technologies. USPS dropped it off today and I got a few minutes to play around with it tonight after the grandson went to bed.

The install was pretty simple, just copy the plugin from the cd to your plugins folder of Mach3. There's also a macro for zeroing your z axis to copy to the macros folder. Then just plugin the wireless dongle and wait for Windows to recognize it as a USB input device, start up Mach3, and power on the pendant. Instructions were a little hard to follow between translations and briefness of them, but wasn't too bad.

2015-10-15 19.28.13.jpg2015-10-15 21.32.29.jpg

The readouts on the pendant are updated in real time and you see both machine coordinates as well as work coordinates.
2015-10-15 21.32.11.jpg

Just a quick test...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAD-9MYxwDk
 
BTW, I saw one on Leo's list of new toys.

You can toggle it to do steps of 1000, 1000, 100, & 1 with each click of the mpg wheel. Has some macro buttons so you can assign macros to them, can pretty much do most operations from it. Not sure yet if it reads the lines of code that it's on, will do some more testing this weekend with it.
 
I bought one from VistaCNC about a year ago. It is just another brand - WELL made.
I looked at them a REALLY LOT over the last few years.
I have tried MANY different variations.

I LOVE the one I have now - hard wired, USB. I just don't trust wireless.

Yes I will be getting another one on the new machine (same brand as yours) - but I am not sure I will keep it.
They threw it in to sweeten the deal.

All the machines I work with - some have pendants and some do not. Some are big and some are small. Some with dials, some with buttons, some with joystick. I have been all over the map with remote devices.

At home I used the keyboard, a Logitech Joystick, Shuttle Pro and now the VISTA i Mach3 - I love the i Mach

I like the dials that you turn to select modes.
Because I have spent so many years working with so many different variations - I KNOW what I like.

Just having ANY remote device is an AWESOME improvement.

Darren - you gunna love it.
 
With the new one there is a whole Printed Circuit board and it gets installed into the machine or something.

I will definitely play around with it for sure.

With my i mach I don't know if it will go with the Larken or not.
I just may let the ShuttlePro go with that machine.
The shuttle Pro is downright nice also.

I am thinking somehow - someway I will be selling something.
 
LOL, With mine, I'm probably just going to use a wii controller for my remote until I build something better.
 
Yeah, I think with Mach4 they are referring to the BOB as the Motion Control (usb controller). The pendant just uses the little USB dongle in the pic you posted along with the controller.

Brent, I'm still planning to leave my Microsoft sidewinder attached so I can quickly move the router out of the way and such.
 
Well, I've been really happy with this device. I have the wireless version you know. So if you happen to get one, don't plug the little wireless dongle in on the front of your computer if it's in a pathway. :doh: At first I thought it was ok, but maybe my batteries were bad in the pendent, but after fresh ones I still wasn't getting any readings at all on the display.
2016-01-18 14.19.35.jpg

I was able to remove the label and screw underneath to remove the case, then check all the connections. Turned out that it broke where the ground goes to the board, so I was able to solder a bridge over to another point to get it working again.
2016-01-18 14.18.35.jpg
 
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