Is there any reason I shouldn’t move the machine along it’s axes by hand?
You can turn the lead screws by hand.
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A long time ago I used to rebuild a robotic machine called a histology stainer. They used PLCs (Arduino hadn’t been invented yet) to control steppers driving lead screws. As @paullarson says, you could turn the lead screws by hand and thereby move the
Interestingly, one major brand would automatically detect the pulses generated by the steppers and capture the location, and one would not. I haven’t got my longmill yet but I assume that it does not. So just be aware that if you move the spindle you probably lose your origin.
Probably the jog functions are safer.
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I move X and Z by hand from time to time. Moving Y is a bit more of a problem because I’m not sure that I could keep the two parallel.
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I can confirm that it does not capture position. So any movement will change the origin point unless you re-zero the machine. I want to move the machine by hand to help find my origin with odd shaped tools and jogging the machine in UGS for this can be tedious. Just didn’t want to damage anything in the process.
That’s a good point. I can see where moving Y would cause some issues in the squaring x to y.
Never thought of that, Just use the jog function to make the parts I need since I’m having trouble with auto mode. I should get a few parts out that way for the job I’m two weeks behind on! 