I recently got a resin 3d printer, so this was the perfect project to try printing my own mechanical keyboard keycaps. I resin printed the enclosure too. Amazing surface finish compared to anything you get with an FDM printer.
Its basically just a mini mechanical keyboard with a form-factor and keycaps designed for being a jog pendant. It’s a bunch of keyboard key switches mounted on a aluminum panel (CNC’d on my HDM) hooked up to an Arduino pro-micro running QMK so it acts as a keyboard to the PC. These buttons are all setup to output multi-key combinations (ctrl-alt-[a-r]) which I configured to appropriate commands in gSender. Works a treat.
I made something similar, with key maps for gSender inbuilt. Mine has a jog-dial too, with a ‘choose axis’ button to direct its output accordingly. These pendants transform how you work with your CNC, especially during zeroing/job set-up.
The only issue I have had is debris, fine dust essentially, getting down into the key/button action and making them intermittent. Blowing them out with an airline works for a while, but eventually the tact switches inside give up and need replacing.
