CNC Router Pendant Controller
This is the 2nd iteration of the pendant controller case. 1st one made from routed MDF, the second one 3d printed, painted and lots of time spent....
With a cut-down design, comes from the need to shoehorn in lots of wires... painful....
In hindsight, would be far easier to buy a case rather than design, print, sand, paint, squeeze in wiring, break several, resolder and repeat.
The prototype pendant controller was made on a milled PCB. Did not need to be pretty as it was a proof of concept. Once the fireware was sorted and the circuit verified, a PCB (well a minimum order of 5) was manufactured in China. The boards cost a fraction of the prices of the courier.
While it is possible to mill the PCB with 0.05" pitch SMD pins for the microcontroller, soldering it without a solder mask is a real pain. Way easier to mount the ICs on prototype expansion boards. Adding a suitable pad layout for the IC in the PCB design application means the same schematic can produce 2 board variants.
