Gantry Alignment - Y1 / Y2

X-Carve Pro
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The pro has limit switches on both Y1 and Y2 sides. I’m curious if homing the machine looks for just one of the limit switches to be pushed, or is it smart enough to look for contact from both switches? The way this unit is built, I don’t see the Y1/Y2 being off nearly as much as my XC1000 would get on occasion, but I’m still interested in how the two Y limit switches are used and engaged.

i.e., if Y limit switch is met, but Y2 is not, does the Y2 motor continue until Y2 is also met? Or does the machine hitting either stop both motors.

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Well, grbl 1.1h and higher supports auto squaring *up to 5% variation from total axis length.

So if there are 2 switches I would hope the dev team set it up to use them properly…

I don’t have the pro yet, but assuming they did set it up properly then if the gantry isn’t too far out of whack, yes it’ll touch the one and pause that side and keep going until the 2nd is hit. Because if this the motor and limit switches being plugged into the correct ports (and not mis matched) really matters…

Oh and the 5% thing is really there in case one of the switches becomes defective, so one stepper won’t just keep grinding away.

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That’s great to know that the capability is there! Now hoping to hear from Inventables on whether it is being used on the XCP.

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Hey Matt, yep when homing the XCP uses both Y1 and Y2 limit switches to home. In fact during the setup thats why you don’t tighten down the cross members on the Y2 axis until it runs through the first homing sequence so it squares everything up.

So if you home your machine each time you use it you basically are double checking square between the gantry and y axis before each cut.

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Interesting. Is the X Controller compatible with 1.1h and added micro switch?
Is so this could be a simple inexpensive improvement to the existing XCarve units many of us have.

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That is great to know, thanks Brandon! I guess I should periodically home the machine. I presently have XY zero set to an L clamp for repeatability, so don’t normally home the machine. I’ll need to calculate from machine ‘home’ to my L clamp ‘home’ so I can get back to it easily.

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You got it, I do the exact same thing with an L clamp. You can go into machine inspector and pull the coordinates of home and then the corner of your L bracket. Then anytime you start up just put that into the jog menu, move it and you’re good to go. Working from the home position will always let you restart a cut even if the machine completely turns off and loses its workpiece home position which has saved me more than a few times when I do something dumb…

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Once you figure this out you can assign a work coordinate 0,0 using the g28 function. Its a pretty neat tool when using homing and fixtures (your l bracket would considered a fixture here) :+1:

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