DIY CNC Mill Controller for Stepper Motor Milling Machine

This addon to our CNC mill was made to allow manual control of the mills cnc stepper motors using a pair of 2 axis joysticks obtained from a broken radio control plane radio transmitter.

The circuit uses a 12 series PIC processor to sample the joystick position and determine a center point. This then sends one output to the mills motor controller for the direction which switches between 0V and 5V via a optical isolator and the second output from the PIC Processor gives a voltage which corresponds to the joysticks position between 0-5V which goes into a voltage to frequency chip which sends a pulsed output to the mills motor controller for the speed. This is also isolated using a a optical isolator to protect this new circuit when the PC is controlling the mill.

The finished hand controller with the 2 joysticks which came from a old RC plane controller.

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