A Custom Pocket NC Jog Wheel

If you have the beautiful little Pocket NC five-axis CNC machine, you probably wish you had a jog wheel. Sure, you can use a normal mouse’s wheel, but having something dedicated would be much better. John Allwine of Allwine Designs decided to make his own, first parametrically modeling everything in Autodesk Fusion 360, then 3D printing a body, and laser cutting the top and bottom covers.

Control is accomplished using an Arduino-compatible board that takes signals from a rotary encoder and translates them into left and right mouse wheel moves. Allwine was careful to select an encoder with 100 detents, which is useful when trying to manipulate physical parts.

Be sure to check out his blog for more information on the build process, as well as an excellent interactive illustration of how this type of encoder works.