CNC Keyboard Emulator

A KB emulator for CNC is a device built from and acts as standard keyboard with one major difference: it only has the keys necessary for basic operation of a mill or lathe and is packaged accordingly.

As shown in the pic below, I took the original interface electronics from a standard full size keyboard and added a larger PCB to avoid soldering all the wires in that small fragile board. Then I mapped the inputs and identified the connections I need in order to produce the characters (such as arrows, Atl, Ccontrol, letters and other keys).

The new keyboard goes in a much smaller box and what I made so far is the upper part while the lower one is pasted there (from SketchUp)  just to show the layout. In the future I plan to replace the electronics with Bluetooth interface and place batteries in the package.

I assume that in due time I will change some of the keys as well and maybe add a joystick.

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