Two retrofitted machines ready for doing some work

Exactly!Check this out! I have developed a ñam Ethercat card that goes behind the screen made for override reading, mpg handwheel, start stop reset , and any button you want (feedhold for example)

And another thing...

Staring at a number of existing Lcnc GUI's for a while I realized why most of the available "stock" screens make me uncomfortable - gmoccapy being the exception.  They look great, and are modifiable... but you have to reach across the screen to actuate the controls.

Instead of putting all the menu/tab buttons along one side (or the other) and/or the bottom, the user has to reach across the screen to get to a different menu.  Or even stop/start the motion.

Again, personal preference.  But you don't usually see industrial equipment where the button legend is below the actual button.  It's supposed to be above the button - where a finger or hand doesn't obscure the legend.  Finger on button and you can still read what you're about to press.

Putting on-screen control buttons all over the place means your hand or arm is blocking the screen frequently.  Not bad during data entry, but terrible when commanding the machine to do something.

Rant over...image missing /media/kunena/emoticons/wink.png

fsabbatini wrote:

Exactly!Check this out! I have developed a ñam Ethercat card that goes behind the screen made for override reading, mpg handwheel, start stop reset , and any button you want (feedhold for example)
 

Very nice.

My plan is similar, but based on existing hardware due to my nonexistant board-development skills...

7i73 with a matrix keypad.  All buttons except cycle start/stop, and feed hold will be run though the 7i73.  Single-block, block skip, axis homing, ATC rotation, etc. all on direct I/O.  MPG will be to the 7i73, as will the usual selector switches for axis & increment.

Cycle start/stop & FH will be direct to a 7i76.

Hoping to incorporate a HAAS-style MPG where the axis selector will also have two additional detents to control FRO & SRO - so the MPG is both a jog wheel and override encoder.  The 100-count MPG should make for good fine-tuning of the feedrate and cut down on operator panel overload.

Perfect, that’s exactly what my board does. And it is waaaay simpler than using mesa as wiring is just easy enough for everyone to do.
New version support 1 mpg, axis selector up to 5 axis, increment selector x1,x10,x100. 8 24v pnp inputs for user pushbuttons, 8 24vdc outputs for driving leds of those buttons, feedrate override knob up to 21 positions.
I decided to go this way because I don’t use mesa cards, all Ethercat based si you just go with one wire from pc to board and then to drives and finally to io board. Easy, not a wire mess.
Anyway this board can be expanded for as many io needed. I had a model before with 55 physical buttons but nowadays manufacturer are reducing button count just for motion control and specific always used functions like coolant on/off, chip conveyor on off, etc

I can make a board and send it to you if you like

Cheers,
Franco

spumco wrote:

None of the non-PC based controls I've used

All are PC based, albeit much older and weaker PC's on those machines than what we use home.

Mmm not really, they have a pc, that’s for sure but the motion controller runs on a dedicated hardware. For example Siemens 840d has a Celerino 600mhz for hmi purposes only, the rest is run on a fpga (I supposed they have a cpu core there doing the math plus a bunch of other things)

There are also super powerful controllers such the one from ISG (the one built in Twincat) that is 100% softcnc as linuxcnc, mach3 and others but with all the bells and whistles