Wow, I JUST discovered this. Mixed feelings. I did extensive work making the HB04 config work the way I wanted and this looked super at first. I seek to remove the terminal from workflow as much as possible and wanted the HB04 to do more.
It's great that they made the multiplier a hardselector. It's GREAT that they used a more versatile dot matrix, presuming you can actually address it that way. The HB04 didn't display messages and cluttered the display with machine coordinates we NEVER use in practice. Over here, we let the machine auto-home then deal exclusively in work coords.
But WTF. What I'm seeing is multiple deal-breakers. They removed half the buttons and use shift key for alt functions, and took Feed and Spindle off the mpg wheel, but they MUST be on the mpg wheel. If you don't like the feel of the feedrate, you need to be able to dial up/down quickly.
That Shift-Function key is unacceptable. Too easy to screw up. I mean if you thought you pressed it but "not hard enough I guess" and instead of Go Work-Home you get a Probe-Z, you may blow the job.
The button labels don't look all that readable, they've removed the distinct colors and icons.
I could make that thing PERFECT just by re-skinning the panel! I'd get the 6-axis version (2 more positions on the axis selector), make B=Feedrate, C=spindle, then make the buttons like the HB04. But as-is, it seems terrible. And I can't realistically make a good reskin. I could color laser print a sheet of transparency plastic but I doubt that'd really work in the long run, mechanically.
What are "lead" and "MPG" modes? The HB04 has that "MPG/STEP" button and I'm confused what it was ever intended to do. The handwheel manually generates pulse-steps, what's this "MPG/STEP" or the "Step" instead of the multipliers mean? What does Lead mean??
