USB joystick and control panel
 

This guy has a cool USB joystick for Mach 3.
It would look cool in blue, no?

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showth...t=30385&page=3

http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/messages/832/3566.jpg

James, you have special permission to paint yours black - to reduce light scatter at night. http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/clipart/happy.gif

Sorry, but I absolutely hate such a control panel for a dusty production environment where you have a turnover of staff to operate the machine. The less buttons the better.

For an enthusiatic owner-operator (hobbyist), fine, whatever floats the boat. This is a serious contender to be replaced by a context-sensitive touch-screen.

Would a PLC controller and a touch screen panel be able to replace the computer/Mach setup?
Like those professional CNC machines?

Reza, I think you answered your own question - this stuff is way above my head.

A well-built MechMate IS a professional CNC machine. http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/clipart/happy.gif

Gerald, I really agree with you when you say that a well built Mechmate is as good as any professional machine. How do you compare the cutting quality of Mechmate to other machines which have price tags in the range of
US $ 50,000 (Servo driven THK ball screws).

Reza you are talking of machines which have proprietory softwares.With the little knowledge that I have gathered during the past year or so I could say that windows based softwares such as mach 3 are on parr with machines running their own softwares. The other advantage with windows based stuff is that if something goes wrong on the software side it is easy to rapir whereas with propritory stuff it is not that easy.

Some manufacturer who had had developed their own software for machines are now slowly turning towards PC based stuff.