Wiring Limit, Home and E-Stop Switches

[gpraceman]

I just bought my first CNC machine, a Zenbot 1216, and was wondering about how I should setup limit, home and E-Stop switches, since the machine did not come with any.  I found the diagram below which seemed like a good starting point.

From doing some initial setup with Mach3 and watching the tutorials, I know that one switch per axis can also be a home switch.  Someone on the CNC Zone forum indicated that I should just wire all 6 switches up in series and Mach3 would be able to sort out the home position.  I would think that those home switches would need to be separate parallel port inputs.

Also, can I get the +5V off of one of the other parallel port pins?

[Tweakie.CNC]

I think that the usual system, at least it is what I have done, is to wire both X Axis switches in series - both Y Axis switches in series and both Z Axis switches in series etc.(for normally closed contact switches). Each pair of switches then has its own input to the parallel port.

For homing - Mach homes in a set direction, and order of axis, until it finds the switch which will act as both 'home' and 'limit' for that axis. Mach then homes the next axis the same way etc etc.

The 5Volt needs to come from your 4 axis interface or breakout board, not from the parallel port.

Hope this helps,

Tweakie.