I am trying to figure out how and where to put home and/or limit switches on my Taig mill. The Z axis has a tee slot on one side where I can easily mount a home switch to home to just short of the mechanical top stop which is where I think that may belong. I can't really see the need for a lower limit as depending on the tool having a hard limit there is not going to keep me from crashing into the table, is that where the soft limits come in? Are soft limits set in the program coordinates or machine coordinates? For the Y axis I was thinking a switch mounted to the motor/leadscrew mounting plate will work and contact the movable slide, setting home as the furthest out position of the table. There is a pin fixed to the Y axis carriage that I can use to contact a switch mounted on the Table for my X home which I suppose should be table full right hand side for XY=0,0.
Does this make sense in the grand scheme of things, home would be table full right, full out toward the front and Z axis full up position? I am still figuring if I should use slotted opto sensors or microswitches so I really need to clear up my confusion with "Home" position before I can make the mountings and actuators or I might end up with a mirror image of what I need.
Once all this is done, if I have set fixture('s) say for engraving a plate I should be able to home the machine and either just load the program code or use the MDI to move to my X,Y zero position and run, that is my limited understanding.
Thanks,
Kristin