I see these neat control  panels created by Hood and others, and was wondering about the buttons.

When you connect a button to  control for  "feed hold" or something, does it connect to the pin (example pin #18) & to the ground or where does it go?

The layouts and assignment to the pins look straightforward, but the wiring is cloudy to me.

Which way to assign the pin is a little confusing. There is Keygrabber, hotkeys, VB script <( is this really using a brain?) & then you have the PoKeys & Modbus.

A little help on the wiring part, and there is  a lot of info on ways to assign the control number to the button.

I really like the way Hood has his controls . Those track ball keyboards are too cool. Plus he has just the basic buttons that you need.

Hope this isn't too complicated, or stupid.


Thanks in advance,

JAckal

I use a PLC to get  my switches into Mach, two reasons for that.
1. Can use 24V so no noise problems
2. Easy to get plenty of spare I/O into Mach

If you just have a parallel port then you can connect to any spare input pin left and basically they connect the same way as you would a limit switch,  you just short the input to gnd via the momentary switch. Same idea if using something like the PoKeys.
Hood

Thanks, Hood.

Do you have any wiring diagrams or links to a diagram as a sample?

Thanks again,

Jackal

It would depend if the inuts you are connecting to are sinking or sourcing but heres a quick sketch showing how they would be wired. eg if your Inputs are sourcing the switches all connect together and go to a Gnd pin and the other side of each switch goes to an Input and vice versa for Sinking Inputs.
Hood

So then, just a momentary push button (normally open) switch would work.

I've seen toggle switches on some of the panels. It would seem that  it could be an override  for the coolant pump. If Mach gives an M08 signal, you could have an interrupter switch to  keep the signal from reaching the pump??

Would this work or would Mach know that the signal was blocked & detect broken wire or something?

Thanks a lot,

JAckal

I have buttons on my panel for coolant, they are momentary and work via a Brain, so if the code puts the coolant on and I want it off I just press the panel button, no need for a toggle.
Dont know what people have toggles for as I dont think I have seen any.
On my panel I have a latching switch for spindle enable/disable and also for power drawbar on the mill but really they are not through Mach as such. The enable gets a signal from Mach to my drives but goes to the spindle drive via the latching switch, Mach doesnt care if its open or closed. The enable switch is NC and NO and I feed the NO back to Mach and have my start button look at the input so that if the drive is disabled Mach sees it and will pop up a message telling me to enable
Hood

I see what you are talking about. Unless you tell a signal to do something and report it back  to Mach, Mach thinks it is done.

All of this is starting to make sense to me now. It took a while, but it is fitting together < ( I think     )

Thanks a lot, Hood.

You are very helpful!!!!!


JAckal

no probs.

Hood