Good evening. On a LEAD machine, seems normal to set up homing with limit switches at the “far” end of travel. Right (X max), back (Y max), and up (Z max). Is it advisable to also install limit switches at the other end of travel? Also, if I understood the electronics build video correctly, Matt set up homing at the left near corner, rather than the right back corner. Any advantage either way? Thx, rink.
If you are using soft limits, there is no need for them up front. If you are not using soft limits and you are worried that you may crash into the front or other axis extremes, then you can wire up additions switches in parallel. I went for almost 6 years without limit switches at all. I finally added them when I rebuilt and upgraded my machine. The advantage to the front is that if you are always cutting small projects near the front, you can save yourself 10 to 20 seconds at the start-up of each day by not having to jog the gantry to the front of the machine to set XYZ 0. The disadvantage is that it will most likely be in the way when you are putting your work stock on the machine and are attempting to clamp it down. You also loose part of that 10-20 second advantage I mentioned above as soon as you start jogging it out of your way after homing. Then you loose more when you jog it back to where you are setting your XYZ 0. So, it all comes down to personal preference. I am an "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" guy though. It is also non-standard, so when you are asking for trouble shooting assistance for things that may involve gcode or homing, unless you mention this is how you did it at the start, there may be delays in helping you find a solution.
Homing at the back seems most logical for me. I currently have a small Next Wave machine which does not home, and does not expose the machine coordinates vs. work coordinates. It’s been a good learning/starter machine, but is very limited. So I’m looking forward to this feature and some more work area.
I have homing switches at both ends of each axis for the reason Giarc mentioned. I sometimes forget to pay attention when moving the machine towards the back or the Z all the way up.
