Controlinator 3000#
CNC handheld pendant for OpenBuilds CONTROL
Introduction#
I started my CNC journey on a pretty advanced Roland MDX-540 machine. It had a nifty pendant with a lot of useful features. It displayed the current machine state and coordinates, had controls for jogging and zeroing, and could control the running jobs.
After I got my own Grbl CNC for the garage I was disappointed that a similar device doesn’t exist. The closest I could find was a basic MPG pendant with just a jog wheel and an emergency stop button.
That was quite underwhelming. I decided to develop my own device that is specifically tailored for my machine and has all the features I need.
I called it “Controlinator 3000”. Since Grbl doesn’t have built-in support for pendants, my solution was to have the device use the sender software as a middleman. It would get the current machine state from the sender and send commands to it to drive the machine.
In my case the sender was OpenBuilds CONTROL. I chose it because it was easily extendable via Javascript macros. It is open-source, which allowed me to peek under the hood for troubleshooting and even make small changes to the base code.
Main features of the pendant#
- Display the current status and position
- Switch between machine and work coordinates
- Fast XY jogging with the joystick
- Precise jogging of a single axis with the handwheel
- Safe jog limits in all directions
- Start and control jobs, adjust feeds and speeds on the fly
- Run custom macros
- Probe Z
- Support for tool changes
- Extensive configuration settings
Documentation#
The source code and a detailed build guide can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/ivomirb/Controlinator-3000
How to make it: hardware.md
How to program it: software.md
How to configure it: settings.md
How to use it: usage.md
Tool length probing: tool_length.md
Issues and future developments: future.md
The PCB design can be found on oshwlab: https://oshwlab.com/ivo1/controlinator3000