Ray why do you say FAR? How do you set up the imach? Keygrabber or plugin? I watched the video it seems nice and it looks like the price must have come down. I was using a defective joystick and this was available at Micro Center NOW. So I bought it, but you know this is an evolutionary process and tools can be reallocated. I like the Campbell and Homann designed stuff too.
I used a ShuttlePro for almost a year. I found it a little squirrelly. Button presses were not always reliably captured by Mach3, and the jog wheel was also a little dodgy at times - jogging would get jerky. The form factor is HORRIBLE for a hand-held pendant - too big, too thin, and too top-heavy. It's hard to operate one-handed. It is incredibly easy to accidentally hit a button while picking it up, or putting it down, or, dropping it, which happens often.
The iMach Pro is MUCH smaller, does more, and has additional jog modes that make it ideal for doing "manual" milling. In fact, I can do 90% of my normal operations using just the pendant. The important functions - spindle on/off, coolant on/off, etc, can be assigned to "double-click" actions, so they're almost impossible to trigger accidentally. Plus, you can control far more "continuous" functions. I can control continuous jog rate, increment jog step size, spindle over-ride and feedrate over-ride all from the pending, in addition to turning the spindle and coolant on and off, activating CycleStart, FeedHold, Stop, and E-Stop, and jogging four axes in several different modes (incremental, continuous, velocity, and step/velocity). And, the E-Stop is a TRUE E-Stop, with dedicated hard-wired switch connections that directly disable my power supplies, even if Mach has (once again...) gone out to lunch. And, it is, for all practical purposes, a passive device - the only electronics are a few TTL gates to light the LEDs. So, it should be VERY reliable. It is also physically robust, and has a nice rubber "cozy" to keep it from being damaged if you do drop it.
Like I said, from the day I got the iMach, I've never used the ShuttlePro again, and never will, except perhaps on my (rarely used) mini mill.
Regards,
RayL.