Should stepper motor reverse or react in any other way, while manually through display controlling movement? These are endstops I am using:
I am wondering because of Ryan response
when endstop on my LowRider is pressed and it is connected to the board, LED is triggered (like this Y for example)
so board is registering them, but there is no reaction from stepper motors. I just hope I did not destroy anything else, except of the drivers, I posted last time.
Thanks
No. Itâs just for homing as far as I know. It wonât stop the CNC mid-cut either.
Ryan also says âHome Y, triggerâŚâ.
Going to try my best to channel robertbu and provide a comprehensive helpful responseâŚ
Manual jogging, and Homing are different.
Homing will cause machine to reverse just a few mm after endstop is hit.
Where as manual jogging (not homing), by default, will ignore the endstop state, you can ram into x/y min or z max and the steppers will âskip stepsâ making loud grinding noises, but mechanically nothing bad is happening, nothing is physically getting damaged. Behavior might be different if soft Endstops are enabled.
How should I understand homing? Is it when machine operates automatically?
@azab2c yeah, steppers did make laud grinding noises and I was really getting worried that I will destroy them. I am glad that it is not the case
Yes, you basically say: Find 0. And then it drives until it hits the endstop and then backs up.
aha, I have not done it so far. Are endstops used also during normal automatic operation of the machine or only homing?
Only homing. You can change it somewhere in the code, but I use different software so I donât know where. 
I thought that endstops have bigger purpose than only homing 
Just to clarify - the Marlin firmware controls whether endstop (or limit) switches are honored outside of the homing cycle (the series of operations done to home the machine). The default setting in Marlin is for homing only. This is fine since the motors will most likely skip steps before they damage the physical machine.
Other firmware and other machines may choose have limit switches active all the time in order to prevent the machine from damaging itself if itâs sent a bad command or something else unexpected happens.
(edited to add this final paragraph) But the motors in the MPCNC machines arenât strong enough to do damage to themselves. The motors just skip steps rather than tearing the machine apart.
what is better, if endstops are only for homing or also outside of homing? it would seem to me that also outside of homing would be much better idea. I would hate to destroy steppers. Maybe it never goes outside of âbordersâ so no demage is done, but I have 0 experience with this so far
You basically canât destroy stepers. And if you start at 0/0 and did not program anything stupid that goes into negative territory, it should not happen (which does not mean it doesnât, I had it happen to me because I didnât take care).
For 99.9% of MPCNC users running Marlin, the sole purpose of endstops is to square the machine so that if you cut a rectangle, you donât get a parallelogram. The process goes:
When you execute step #4 and reset the origin, Marlin no longer considers itself homed, and soft stops are disabled. This means that soft stops (even if enabled) to limit machine movement are useless for most MPCNC use cases.
It is possible to do more sophisticated things with homing, endstops and origins using workspaces. This includes having soft stops working during cutting, but you would have to enable soft stops and define the bed size of your machine (requires reflashing).
For much of the stuff I do personally, I donât even home/square my machine. I just push the axes against the stops and then drag my router to the home position of the stock. Typically, I only home if I am making something that has multiple parts that must fit together.
As for damage to the machine, Philipp is right, the motors are just not strong enough to so any damage, and the ugly sound they make when stopped is non-destructive. The worst thing that has ever happened to me in this area is that I broke a stop block once (quick 3D print to fix).
thanks for great explanation. I hope i will not destroy steppers
it makes sence that after setting 0/0 for machine, it should not go to negatives, good point
The skipping steps sounds like grinding gears, but there are no gears in the stepper motors. They are just a ton of magnets aligned on an axle. When the skip happens, the axle very quickly lines up with the next set and that fast acceleration sounds bad. But it is not breaking anything.
glad to hear that
I should have added âBut the motors in the MPCNC machines arenât strong enough to do damage to themselves. The motors just skip steps rather than tearing the machine apart.â to the end of my post.
(and now I have)
