Soft limits on my 1000 xcarve

So I am finishing up a pile of mods I did during my recent downtime. Stiffening mod with replacing the washers and Y axis supports were the two main mods. The last thing I had to complete was shaving off some of my router because I cut the rectangle out of my spindle mount to recess the dwp611. Of course I have hit my Z homing switch once or twice during the life of my machine, but it was working fine even though it was bent haha! Well I caught the roller with the router while reattaching everything. It shot that roller off like a bat out of hell and now I am waiting on switches from amazon.

I would like to setup soft limits so I can stop smashing this limit when I press page up instead of down like a dummy. I know I set $20=1 to turn them on but I need to set the max x,y, and z ($130, $131, $132 respectfully). My question is how is this value entered. Is it in relative position or machine coordinates?

I added one screw with nut to Motor Mount plate. Never breake Z switch again.

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Zachery,

If you are going to use the soft limits the x , y and z values refer to the maximum travel in those axis’ from where you Home the machine. To set them up you can home your machine re-set Zeros, then jog each axis to where you feel like your max travel in each direction is then just read the number for that axis that is what you would enter as max travel. its a little more difficult for the Z since all your bits are not the same but you can choose something that will allow you to use your shortest bit to cut to the spoilboard. This is usually ok since the most common problem with the Z is holding the key down this will stop that. One other note you will basically be forced to use the Homing sequence when you turn on your machine.

@ZacheryLittell

The defaults for the 1000mm are:

$130=790.000 (x max travel, mm)
$131=790.000 (y max travel, mm)
$132=100.000 (z max travel, mm)

You should do this anyway. Just for grins I home my machine before each job.

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1 - May be correct, care to elaborate on your typical work flow / kind of carves you do? Sometimes users may have incorrect prerception on how things ties together and loose out on functionality. Others may have valid opinions related to their specific usages :slight_smile:

2 - No, without homing switches you won’t have a consistent machine reference point. Soft limits are governed by this machine reference point. Same applies for work zero, G28 and G30 parking points.

Are you sure? How do you reference Mach3 without homing switches so Mach3 can track Min and Max soft limits? It has been a while since I used Mach3, but I never did without using homing switches.

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If you are happy as-is, no worries :slight_smile:

The sole purpose of homing switches is to syncronize the work space to the machine.
If used one can utilize:

  • soft limits
  • parking spots (G28 and G30)
  • work offsets (WCS54-59 and subsets of these, P)
  • Quickly restart an aborted or partial carve where synchronisation is lost
  • Automatic tool changer
  • Fixed probing positing for establishing Z height, automatic probing
  • and much more.

Not all functions have value for everyone, ones milage may vary.

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They’re useless without homing. The intended use is to always home the machine.