Endstops - to use or not to use, a brief explanation of my personal preference. I have noticed that many people do not use end stops/limit switches on their CNC routers. This is a very workable way to do things, but it does have some drawbacks. One issue that may occur running without limit switches is that when jogging the router, you may accidentally run you spindle past the actual work area, risking damage to the machine. The deciding factor for me was the ability to use indexed templates for repetitive jobs. For example, I have clock blanks that are already cut to the basic shape. I have a template that uses pins to locate it on the work area, allowing me to drop in the clock blank and work my magic. Without limit switches, I would have a great deal of setup work to do, and would probably have to adjust it multiple times to get the location correct. With the template and limit switches setup is as simple as dropping the template over the removable locator pins, and loading the pre-made Gcode file. This way I can do as few as one, or as many as I want very quickly, and switching to a different style is very quick and easy. Just my 2 cents (3.8 cents canadian ) Anthony Bolgar Service Manager Niagara Clock 905-371-9993
Homing switches are worth their weight in gold. I would never consider a new build without them. For me, they easily shave off 15 minutes of futzing around jogging, making easy-to-screw-up commands to reset the position, and worrying about accidentally cutting into my spoil board. Every single job. Setting up homing switches is extremely simple, using microswitches it is very cheap and easy to wire. And they really go a long way towards converting a 'tinker/hobby' machine to a 'really useful for real work' machine. So between us, I guess we have 4 cents in favor of homing switches. -D
