Soft limits before speed

Set the limits first

Soft limits stop the machine from driving the gantry into its end stops. Without them, one wrong zero or a mistyped coordinate can crash the gantry hard enough to damage racks and bearings. Plenty of older machines run without them because nobody set them up.

Then think about speed

Owners often want faster rapids and feeds after a few months. Get soft limits and homing reliable first. A fast machine without limits just crashes faster.

Document them

Write the limit values on a one-page control map near the pendant. Back up the controller settings to two places, one of them off site. A refresh of the controller is the right moment to do all of this properly.

The slip we see most

Disabling soft limits to finish one awkward job, then forgetting to turn them back on.

How you know it is working

Homing works first time every morning and the machine has not touched its end stops since.

Written by Nadia Pillay, Training Manager. Nadia designs the training cell days and the college tray systems.