In this article, I will be looking at this inexpensive Mach3 pendant.

I picked mine up here:

Mach 3 Pendant

Available at under $40 it is one of your most inexpensive options for adding a pendant to Mach3.

In the past, I had almost exclusively used Xbox360 controllers as my jog pendants for Mach3.

The joysticks are proportional and all the buttons are programmable.

The problem is that with Windows 10 and UC100 and UC300 motion controllers I just cant get them to function properly.

As I have been converting my various CNC machines to Windows 10, I started using the HB04 pendant shown here.

It works well and you can program most of the buttons, it is a little expensive at well over $100.

You can pick one up here:

HB04 Wireless Pendant

 

The Good and the Bad

The Good

The Mach 3 pendant is very easy to get up and running. There are no drivers or plugins needed. You simply plug-in the included USB connector into your PC and its ready to use.

The Bad

The pendant shows up as a keyboard on your PC and the various buttons are mapped to particular keys. Even the joystick is mapped to a keyboards arrow keys.

The downside is that the buttons are not programmable. They are hardware set to certain keys.

One way to get around the hard wired buttons is to use a program like KeyGrabber.

There are a few downsides to using this program.

  • You have to start the program each time your PC.

  • If you use your PC for other operations, this program can interfere with things.

  • I have found the program a little flaky on some machines.

My Solution

The keys that Mach 3 uses for various function short cuts are defined in the Mach3 screen set.

Here I am using MachScreen to make some simple changes to the screen set.

While there are other programs that can be used to change the keyboard scan codes, this is the only one I could get up and running on my Windows 7 PC.

MachScreen has an overview mode that will let you change the the keyboard shortcuts to any button on the screen.

The Changes

On screen 1, I made the following changes:

  1. I changed the Spindle On/Off button from F5 to Ctrl-F5 (116 to 32884)

  2. I changed the Ref All Home button from 36 to 122.

  3. I changed the Auto Tool Zero button from 65535 to 121

  4. I changed the Zero X button from 65535 to 116

  5. I changed the Zero Y button from 65535 to 32855

  6. I changed the Zero Z button from 65535 to 2126

  7. I changed SpindleSpeed Up to 0

  8. I changed SpindleSpeed Down to 0

  9. I changed Rewind to 0

  10. I changed Single Block to 0

  11. I changed Feed Raise to 0

  12. I changed Feed Lower to 0

On screen 50 (Jogger), I made the following changes:

  1. I changed the Toggle Cont/Step button from 34842 to 107

  2. I changed the Jog Inc Cycle button from 2122 to 109


I save my changes. I recommend you change the name or add a version number so that if you can go back to your original if needed.

Load Mach 3 and tell it the name of your new screen set by using the View/Loadscreens menu.

Pendant Labels

I added some 3/4” circle labels over the changed buttons, and labeled them as shown here.

Note that you can get as fancy as you want with the labels. With a color printer you can make some pretty cool labels.

I am keeping my labels simple for now as I know I will probably be changing things as I use the pendant.

Feed Rate Button Remap

A little note about the feed rate button remap. The new screen set maps this button to the Auto Tool Zero button in Mach3. This is a user defined button, so you can add any script you want. In my case I have assigned a Z height probe script to this button.

Conclusion

I changed my keys, as I don’t use many of the existing buttons, if you do, then only change the ones you need.

Please note that the joystick is not proportional. They machine will jog at what ever speed you have Mach 3 set to. Changes this speed by using the J+ and J- buttons.

If you don’t want to use the Step/Cont or Step Inc buttons, you can reassign them to the shift key so that you can rapid with the joystick as needed.

I have created a new KRMx02 screen set that you can download if you like my changes. You can get it here:

KRMx02 Mach3 Joystick Pendant V1

Un-zip the file and place it into your Mach 3 directory and load the new screen with the View/load screens menu.

The included cable will stretch to about 6 feet. If you need more you can use a standard headset cable with RJ9 connectors.

Here is one that will stretch to about 25 feet.

25’ Coiled Headset Cable