My kit and the website say 5 endstops, but there are spots for 6 (xmin, xmax, zmax (on each side), ymin/max (one for each side). Is only one endstop needed for the y axis? If so does it matter on which side to put it? Or did I miss something else?
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Ohh man…
I guess you don’t put both endstops on the core…
That’s going to be a pain to undo…
I think this is one thing that the documentation could do a little better is to specify which things to do for both sides and which not.
A lot of things are implied to do on both sides, but then if you have something like this where you don’t do it on both sides it’s not super clear…
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Nothing implies both sides, the pictures only show one. For Y there was a note that says you don’t need it, I added it to X as well, thanks for the hint.
To remove the core, just jog your CNC all the way to the top, loosen the top rail, slide it out to the side and remove the core. Takes three minutes.
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No you’re right it doesn’t imply you should. And in retrospect it made perfect sense to only have one of them. What tripped me up is that there were slots on both sides, and I think that alone should probably warrant a note - like on Y (as you said)
Luckily I don’t have everything assembled yet, so it was a pretty quick fix 
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We went through the docs so often and somehow missed this. I built five LR4s now, three in the beta and had a LR3 before, I would never have questioned it. The first beta didn’t have it, it was only added in the second or third because some users insisted that they needed it. We had a lengthy discussion whether that would be confusing or not… It seems it is. 
When Ryan is awake he is probably going to add the pull request for the docs I made, then the same warning will be there.
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Such rookie numbers 
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Yeah, but that’s only for Y, not for X. I know because I added it.
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In my opinion, for better crash safety, it would be best to mount both endstops on the core. You’d just need to configure both endstops as normally closed (which is usually the default anyway) and then wire them in series.
The endstops are only used during homing. Any other time they are ignored. There is no reason to have a second endstop on any of the axis.
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That really depends on the specific controller being used. I didn’t realize that’s how it works with the Jackpot, since I don’t own one myself. I assumed the endstops would also serve as a safety feature, as is usually the case with CNC machines.
Not with the Jackpot. I have the OpenCNCShield as well but if you are crashing the CNC you did something very wrong. 
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Also worth noting that the CNC is stronger than the torque of the motors so ‘crashing’ isn’t going to damage anything. The horrible grinding noise is just skipping steps not stripping gears.
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There’s no safety issue with a LowRider, only loss of work piece. But, if you’re crashing into machine limits, you’ve already ruined your work piece.
100%
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Not necessarily. My switches did save me some workpieces because I forgot that it can’t go lower than 0.
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OK that’s fair. Still, I stand by the general case.
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It helps if you are only a little bit stupid. But that’s it.
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I go all in on stupidity, so it’d probably not save me
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Tell that to all the unfortunate end stop switches with bent and broken levers…
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That is actually a fair point, you’re right.