Hi,
 im finally getting fed up of using a mouse with mach3,you can now get second hand 15" touchscreen monitors for reasonable money off ebay.
Is there any thing I should be aware of,any hints/tips problems?
  regards
   Tony

I built a plywood box to keep metal out of it. And The proper screen set and resolution took some experiments . been a year for me.(since I had time)

Thanks for quick reply - proper screenset? what does that mean? i make my own screensets will i not be able to use them or is it a matter of enlarging/simplifying buttons?

A 15 inch touch screen in my opinion is too small. If you do go with a 15 then you would ideally need to make up a screenset of your own with larger buttons and a lot fewer of them than the standard screen has.
I have a 15  on the coil winder I built and it works fine but it only has maybe 10 buttons total.
On my other machines I use 17's and even they would be fiddly with the standard Mill screenset unless using a stylus.
I have used three types of touch screens, Capacitive, Resistive and SAW, the latter I did away with as any liquids on the screen would move the cursor and it was too risky for me as I often have coolant on my hands and also the screen was opposite one of my manual lathes that splashed coolant everywhere. Of the other two types my favourite is the capacitive but that is likely just because it is a high quality overlay rather than a cheap Chinese one. Having said that the Chinese ones do work well.
Of course all of this is just my opinion :0
Hood

cheers, ok so is there a minimum size onscreen button like say 12mm square?I could use a mixture of touch screen for the important comands and the mouse/touch pad for the not so often used commands?
  Tony

i have two 21" widescreen touchscreens and they're great, but i wouldn't go any smaller.

Min button size I suppose would depend on how fat your fingers are

Hood

Min button size I suppose would depend on how fat your fingers are

Hood

....or if you have a shaking issue...........  

I bought via evilbay a brand new Advantech 17" touch screen for £120 for my lathe project, worth every penny! the first cnc machine with a touch screen I used, was a Cincinatti Sabre back in 1995, what ever happened to that old Acramatic cnc control? quite liked it, till it lunched on its own hard drive. Not a bad machine, the company I worked for then scrapped it 5 years ago!

http://www.amazon.com/ML228H-21-5-Inch-Ultra-Thin-Integrated-Speakers/dp/B00413PHEQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Think this would be a good one? I can never find the specs on the screen touch style.

And the people using touch screens, do you open a windows keyboard and use the monitor for typing... completely eliminating a keyboard?