LxCVision Handbox

The aim of this projekt is to create a remote pendant for jogging and setup, from scratch.
This is part of the LxCVision? projekt, the overal aim of witch is to create a new touch gui and provide a well documented way to controll Mill Turn and EDM machines using the EtherCAT bus.
Althoug it is a part of the LxCvision projekt the handbox can bee used with any LinuxCNC machine with a spare ethernet port.

The LxCVision Handbox can bee build with simple of the shelf componants and features a 3,5" touchscreen, 7 buttons and a Joggweel (quadrature encoder).
A arduino due is used as its brains and a 3,5" Nextion Touchscreen enables the user to easely coustomize the user interface.

Working Principal:

The Handbox provides the user with controls for jogging, stoping and starting the current programm and any amount of additional functions can be accessed do to the flexible UI that is provided throug the touch display.
For safty reasons the pendant is a slve to the CNC control and does not perform any actions on its own. It merly extends the UI of the machine away from the main display.
For example if the users wants to jogg an axis and turns the handwheel the pendant sends the axis to be jogged, the speed at whitch this is to be done and the direction to the control which will coordinate the required motion.

The Arduino:

Processes all inputs and outputs from the buttons, encoder and touchdisplay. This means the pendant can operate independantly from the machines computer an doesn't use up its resourches while the machine is running.

Bill of materials:

• 1 Arduino Due without headers (The Due or a similar arduino compatible board with an ARM processor is needed becaus of the reaction speed required from a CNC pendant)

• 1 Nextion 3,5" Touch display (Any Nextion Display from the Enhanced or Intelligent Series can be used)

• 1 EasyCAT shield for the Arduino (Used as interface with the EtherCAT network that connects the pendant with the CNC computer)

• 1 rotary switch (3 to 6 positions depending on the number of axis that need to be controlled)

• 5 momentary switches with build in LEDs (1 Red, 1Green and 3 of a diffrent color)

• 2 momnetary switches without LEDs

• 1 rotary quadrature encoder (used for the joggwheel, preferable 100 positions/rotation)

• 1 enclosure that feels nice in the hand (the enclosure needs to be roughtly 120x200x30mm in order to fit the 3,5" display and the arduino)

• 1 cable grommet (preferably with stress relief, diameter is dependant on the cable you use)

• 1 shielded cable with 5 wire pairs (4 pairs for the EtherCAT and 1 pair for power, lenght is dependant on the machine the pendant will be instaled on)

• some lenghts of wire for connecting the varius commponants

• 15 - 20 10k ohm resisors (needed as pulldown or pullup resistors for the arduino)

• thick plastic foil for insulating the components from each other (foil sheets for overhad projectors are ideal for this task)

System Requirements:

• +5V that turns on and off with the machine

• 1 ethernet port

• EtherCAT master installed on the CNC computer (a tutorial on how to set one up and connect it with LinuxCNC can be found here?)