bCNC Pendant

thingiverse

I stumbled upon an eBay listing for a rotary encoder used in commercial CNC pendants by searching for 'cnc hand wheel' or 'ZSS600-001-100B-5L'. This sparked an idea to create my own custom one. I'm currently using bCNC to control my mini CNC machine. In bCNC, I navigate the three axes using the arrow and page-up/page-down keys. Considering this, along with the capability of programming an Arduino Pro Micro to act as a keyboard, the electronic aspect of this project is largely complete. The remaining task was to design a case for the rotary encoder and USB breakout board. However, I had to work within constraints set by their size, which prevented me from making it any smaller. You can see the finished product in action here: https://youtu.be/PTTVuVUZYM8 I've included an OpenSCAD file that's somewhat parametric, allowing for some customization options.