Home Switches

 
 
 

Today I added home switches to the table mill.

The microswitches were just ones I had lying around that were a suitable size. It didn't take long to discover that they mounted via a pair of 2mm holes. Unfortunately, I didn't have any M2 bolts around.

So with desperation driving necessity, I found a length of thick wire (actually ~ 1.9mm music wire) and used the drill to run it through an M2 die. This nicely gave me a length of M2 threaded rod.

In the spirit of hackery, I then drilled a pair of 1.5mm holes into the aluminium bracket, and use the drill to drive the threaded rod into the holes. The music wire being much harder than the aluminium, it just tapped a thread into the al bracket. Ta-dah! Easy mounting for the micro-switches. A very small bad of CA glue to stop things vibrating free and it's all done.

I'm still using MACH3 to drive the mill at the moment (haven't yet installed EMC2) but it's still neat to click on 'Ref All Home', and watch the mill drive the Z, Y and X axis to the home switches, stop, and reverse slowly until it comes off the switch.

I think tomorrow I'll be in shape to do the initial cuts on the upgraded mill.