What's an electronic handwheel?

Russell,

Dave has given you 2/3 of the answer already...

Electronic handwheels can also be a rotating wheel, usually on the
cnc control itself, sometimes on a pendant (which is a relatively
smnall hand-held walk around thingie to control the machine while
looking into it closely, or to be used at the far end of a big
machine.) This wheel is attached to an encoder which sends pulses to
the CNC control. The control then moves the axis as if a REAL
handwheel was being used.

On most mills, there is only one electronic handwheel (these are also
called jogwheels, MPG's -Manual Pulse Generator, RPG's -Rotary Pulse
Generator. There is a switch to determine which axis the wheel will
move, and another to define/determine how far it will move with each
click of the wheel (There are detents so that there is a very obvious
clicking as the wheel is turned; usually 50, 100, sometimes 25per
rev. of the wheel.

CNC lathes nowadays often have two electronic handwheels, located
about where the manual wheels woulda been. (We're seeing this more
with "Toolroom" mills and lathes in the recent attempts by CNC mfrs.
to draw new customers to CNC. These(relatively) inexpensive machines
try to be the best of both worlds, and some folks really like them.
Many shops find that like most combo tools, they are full of
compromises. It's pretty amazing how inexpensively one can already!
purchase these used, since shops pretty quickly figure out that a
REAL cnc machine is worth the money.

Anyway, to get back on track<G>, another feature sometimes found
on "electronic" handwheels on these lathes and mills is electronic
gearing, to create angles or arcs by turning only one axis wheel. The
control uses the jogwheel input to create the moves needed by both
axes to complete moves which a manual operator could not do. In other
words, you tell the control you want an arc of radius X, and as you
turn one wheel, the other axis moves to create THAT radius. Pretty
slick. Angles can also be done this way. Save a series of these
movements and you can create simple part programs without any coding,
except to set feedrate.

So there's a long answer to your short question...

Hope it helps,

Ballendo

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, Mindbeast <mindbeast@y...>
wrote:

> What are Handwheels and Electronic Handwheels?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Russell
>