Pendant
I sourced a pair of 1000 count 80mm diameter encoder hand wheels from Amazon. The Pendant internal & external wiring schematic. The DB25 will be mounted on the face of the machine and two DE9 cords will be routed to the sockets on the Acorn6. The cord from the pendant to the socket on the machine will be a standard DB25 straight through extension cable.
A pass through the milling machine cut the openings to mount the encoder modules. The end plate was machined to fit the DB25 connector.
After installing the DB25 in the endplate I wired the encoders. Then I buttoned it up, adding a nice handle to hang it from when not in use.
I milled an opening in a small anodized luggage tag and then laser engraved the legend. Then installed the bulkhead plate with connector into some holes I cut in the right end of the lathe cabinet.
Rear view of DB25 socket showing combined wiring, Two DE9 cords go to the encoder ports on the Acorn6. The DB25 socket has been installed with its bezel in the right image.
The two DE9 cables to the Acorn6 are shown connected at the very right side of this image. There are three encoder ports on the Acorn6, the grey DE9 connects to the spindle encoder. The pendant is installed and temporarily hanging on the cabinet face. A hanging hook will be 3D printed to hang the unit more permanently.
After some consideration I elected to remake the front panel of the pendant. The X Axis hand wheel was changed to a 60mm Unit to help differentiate between the Z and X axis's. The Z Axis is 80mm. A nice small E Stop button was also added. The button is 3/4" in diameter and is made from anodized aluminum. With 13 extra pins in the DB25 cable adding another circuit is easy.