Ignoramus22661 wrote:

Not as much progress lately for three reasons.

1. I was away for 4 days
2. It is very hot in the garage
3. I have been using the mill a lot, besides just working on it.

I got a few things accomplished, however.

1. I mounted a nice 17 inch monitor (1280x1024) in place of the old
display. I had to cnc machine the brackets holding it, which was
awfully nice. I could dream up the shape I want, alter it, etc and
the mill makes exactly what it is instructed to make. The brackets
were curvy where necessary, which was no problem for the mill, of
course.

2. Mounted keyboard on brackets under where the old control was
(slightly under the pendant).

So, now I have a gaping hole in place of where the old Heidenhain
control was. Keyboard is under that hole, a few buttons on the left,
and finally the new 17" monitor is above that hole. I would say it is
12x10 or even more. So, what should I do with it?

My only answer was to use that to put in little shelves and keep my
measuring tools (edge finder, calipers, touch probe etc etc) in that
little area on the tiny shelves.

Any other ideas?

i

You could mount one of the X-Keys programmable keypads in that space,
and custom label and program it for all the commonly used pendant
functions. They have a model with a jog/shuttle wheel which would be
nice for manual control along with some of the buttons around it
programmed for axis select and step increment select. I'm sure there are
some EMC specific pendants available as well, there are a number for
Mach3.