Emergency Stop - Or making stop machine More intuitive

As a new user I am experimenting and learning with my machine. I have had several instances where being able to stop the machine quickly would have been nice. My experience has been I would hit stop which would do nothing…I had to then move my cursor over to pause and hit pause. Ideally there would be a hardware button for emergency stops but the next best would be a software button that stops the machine immediately. One big red button. This feature may not be required by more experienced users so could be removed by toggle a selection.

The only Emergency Stop you should trust is a big red power switch which kills power to the router and the machine.

I use an old under monitor computer surge protector (guess I’m dating myself that I had that to spare), but anything similar which powers off everything would be fine. Unfortunately, the power strips which I found ages ago which had E-stop buttons are no longer available (always regretted not getting one).

4 Likes

That makes sense and is a good suggestion…now off to look for a power strip

Maybe something like this…hook a strip with the controller and router into it.

Emergency Stop Switch candidate

3 Likes

I have the Rockler version of that… it’s great… totally worth it.

1 Like

Rockler has them on sale at the moment… $29… I have a few of them including one on my shapoko that kills power to everything.

2 Likes

Here is mine, large stop button with individual switches for each unit. wish I would have put the big button on the side, bumped it couple of times reaching in

the unit

1 Like

Button I used

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KPEEPAW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

1 Like

The Emergency Stop is just that, for an Emergency.

And using the mouse or what ever you use has worked for me but it’s not very fast to grab the mouse, move it and click the button.

I would like to see a Halt button that uses a key on the keyboard.

A hardware one would be nice but there are enough wires going into the controller box already.

My brother has a Tormach 1100M and it’s dedicated controller uses the space bar to halt the operation, It stops right where it is when you press the space bar spindle still running but no movement on any axis.

When he has created a new toolpath he has his finger on the space bar just in case something doesn’t look right or does something it’s not supposed to do.

He uses the emergency stop if a bit plunged hard into the work piece or a piece of metal was knocked off and went flying or some other bad thing that could hurt the machine or operator.

The Halt would be for times where, oh, I loaded the wrong file, oh, I forgot to make that change, oh, I put in the wrong bit, forgot to change the bit, oh, it’s going to hit a hold down bracket, that doesn’t look like the toolpath I wanted it to do…

After the machine has stopped moving It could show a dialog box asking to continue, or abort the job.

I’ve seen mentioned before others wanting a feature like this because I believe it’s not good to power off the whole thing while it’s running a job unless it is a real emergency like the dust boot was knocked off by something or the bit just plunged way down into the work piece …

Just my thoughts,

Jeffery

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.