Hi all,
Im building a new control panel for me retro mill.  Id like to make it similar to my Okumas! 
My question is this, can I use toggle switches for  on off switch for functions such as coolant, optional stop, single block etc.  The switch will stay on  when the function is required and off when its not.
But I see mach3  uses momentary switching to operate these, can this be changed to meet my preferred switching requirements?

Thanks, Paul.

Not really but is there a need to?
The momentary buttons will toggle anyway, one press if coolant is off and it will come on. Press again and it will go off.

Hood

Yes I know it not absolutely necessary.  But Its just I prefer the visual indication that a function is in play by visually seeing the toggle switches lever either UP or DOWN.

If there was a way I would implement it on my panel.

Can't you connect the switch to an Input, and use a Brain to monitor the input, and activate the function when the input is active?

Hi

Oh Id love to!  But do you think it can be done?  So lets say when the contacts of the toggle switch are closed (not momentary) lets say single block is on.  Then when the switch contacts are permanently open, single block is off.

Sounds simple enough but I'm not sure how to go about this.

The machine is built and running well, now I want to ditch the laptop and make popper control panel.

Any help would be great.

Looks like you can't do it with a brain as all you can do is call the single step button, which toggles it on or off.
You probably can do it with the macropump, though.

Your problem is that this would have to be a two way thing. Not too big a deal to get a toggle switch to be seen by Mach as a momentary but what about the other way around? Mach obviously can't flip your switch. So you flip coolant on - you hit a limit or whatever - coolant goes off - your switch position still says it's on. You now have to physically toggle all your switches to make sure they match the actual state again. Surely the whole point just flew in the waste bin. Now if you had motor driven switches... 

Can you have a physical status LED? Been wondering this myself?

Hi All,
I'll prolly give up soon and just use momentary buttons, but I was pondering the situation, as you do, and it occurred to me that many of the remote hand wheel pendants we use on mach controllers have a rotary switch that selects the  axis X,Y,Z,4TH.  the rotary axis selector switch appears to close a contact and stay closed on  that axis until the next axis is selected.  when you reset or power up mach3 the axis that is selected on the pendant stays on the selected axis right?

Well then why cant the same apply for say single block or coolant on or any aux function for that matter?

Just asking

Not quite true, you can have the rotary set to X and then press an onscreen button for Y and it will shift to Y and stay there. To get it back to X with the rotary you would first have to move off X then back on.
I do recall I used a timer of some sort in a Brain a while back for buttons to operate the FRO, this allowed me to hold the button closed and it would step through the FRO, so might be worth looking at if your heart is set on toggle switches.
Hood