Changes I would like to see in the CNC Shark Control Panel

[FixitMike]

1. Darker lines and lettering in the display. Preferably black or dark blue instead of light blue. I can't see the light blue lines on my laptop unless I am looking directly at the screen, they fade out when I look at an angle (which is almost always, since I have the laptop turned so the chips don't hit the screen).
2. Fine adjust for the Z axis.
a. Include the FRO slider in the jog mode.
b. Add a method for fine adjustment. I would suggest a "FINE" box attached to the Z+ and Z- boxes that would step the router up and down at about 1/8 the rate of the existing boxes. Or maybe use the Shift + PgUP or PgDn keys for fine adjust. Best would be both methods.
3. Keyboard shortcuts. Such as "J" to switch to the jog mode, "L" to load from the SD card, etc. Better would be if there was also a popup window that would show them when your cursor was on a "Shortcuts" block in the display.

[Buc]

I like all of FititMike's request and i would like to add to it. How about tool retrace, tool inspect, and rapid traverse dry run.

Buc

[JerryBurks]

I know, it is not the idea of buying a turnkey machine...but if that is really important for you: for something like $200 you can buy a 4-axis USB controller with new PC software that can do all that, e.g. from Planet-CNC (Mach3 may be a little more). You get also other goodies like automatic tool length measurement, mirroring or rotating x vs. y axis (without gantry reversal and plug swap), toolpath screen, jog pendant and getting rid of the SD card download. I just bought one for my next homebuilt CNC project and am quite impressed.

It should not take much to swap the controller in the Shark box but some electrical understanding is required.