Has anyone added a controller like this one to their Lead machine? Coming from a machinist background, I am very comfortable with this style and just wondered if it would be possible to control the blackbox with it?
that is an empty box, not going to interface to anything like that. should be possible to hook up all the buttons etc to a RPi or other computer inards and figure out how to make it all work together. maybe an Acorn controller or similar can talk to all that hardware?? I would put a PC in it and configure LinuxCNC as the interface, but then of course you will need those Mesa interface cards , not a Blackbox The blackbox is the controller (converts Gcode into motor movement) but it speaks plain 'serial interface' on the USB port, the GUI program on the PC , like OpenBuildsCONTROL, bCNC, UGS, is what makes the user interface tick and nothing I know of will accept inputs from that delicious jog wheel and other industrial buttons and talk sense to the Blackbox. no doubt there is a suitable hardware interface that can be tied to windows or Linux to use those inputs (send me a Haas box like that and I might figure it out) , but the dedicated Acorn type controllers, or LinuxCNC with Mesa interfaces are all I can think of now.
For grblHAL there are projects like this, but it cannot be used with the X32 - at least not yet. Later it might become possible to connect via Bluetooth in addition to via a serial port or CAN bus...
Oh, I have one of those. I just really like the form factor and overall functionality of the Haas. Not to mention the scroll wheel is just a dream to use. I also find the OB interface to be a bit hit-or-miss sometimes. The touch buttons don't always register accurately. I frequently have been trying to reduce the jog rate % and it will activate the open folder softkey instead. I also have ran into issues with manually jogging while doing a surfacing pass by hand, since the buttons are not tactile, it becomes very easy to accidentally move the z-axis instead of the x-axis unless I'm paying very close attention to the controller.
This is the answer. Microcontroller-based solutions work great at converting G-code to motion, but if you want machine controls, you need a machine controller. The Mesa cards can handle all the high-speed encoder inputs required for this kind of interface. I don't know if I could go back to touching off without a jog pendant- Grizzly G0758 Benchtop Mill Conversion
