Sorry if I’m posting this in the wrong area, but I have a question about homing.
I’m always reading that you’re supposed to home the machine each time you use it, but I’m not sure I understand why.
I’m coming from using a LongMill with no sensors and thus no homing feature.
And to be honest, for the stuff I work on I’ve never really needed to home the machine in any way.
I almost always work off the corner of the workpiece and use the AutoZero touch plate to set the 0.
I create my tool paths in MeshCAM and always include the dimensions of the workpiece, so my XYZ 0 is typically the SW corner of the piece and the tool paths are charted relative to that.
That’s why I’m wondering why, in my usual scenario, I would ever need to home my machine to the sensors when I’m just going to set the zeros relative to the workpiece anyway.
Should I be homing the machine every time just to establish the absolute coordinates of the machine, even though my tool paths will be relative to the workpiece?
There is no need for homing in your situation. The thing to be aware of is that some features will not be available if no home is established. In particular I am thinking the single button ‘go to a corner’ feature (which I use a lot).
I am pretty sure there are other instances where it makes sense to home but it really isn’t necessary in the use case you describe.
not a requirement, but more like a nice to have
go Home is a nice way to move the machine out of the way in order to work on loading/unloading the work area
G28 is magical
if you have homing the software will know where it is all all times, it will avoid hitting machine limits, avoid damage to rails and so on
G54 to G59
and so on
Thanks, everyone! Excellent points. Sounds to me like it’s a “best practice,” even in the use case I describe, to home the machine at the start of a session to get the benefit of quickly moving the X gantry out of the way or telling it to “go sit in the corner.” Hadn’t considered that benefit, and didn’t have it with my LongMill. But the ability to avoid manually jogging it out of the way strikes me as a big time (and impatience) saver!
