[DC-Modder]

So I'm new to cnc and I finally have my machine up and running after calibrating it.

So here is what happened. I made a jig that I could place a 3.5"x3.5"x12" block of wood in. I cut this jig with my cnc. I had it drill two hols in it so I could put some short screws from the bottom up into the block. As it was drilling one of the holes it said exceeded soft limit. This is in EMC2. So that's the first time that has happened. I thought it was just a glitch. So I restarted EMC2 and same problem. It drilled the hole regardless before the error so I figured I would solve that later. Now that my jig is made I placed in my piece and ran my program. Everything worked beutifully, but I relized I had to make a minor adjustment to the size of a cut. So after the fix I ran the same program again. Pretty much cutting all air since it was only going to fix one part. As it neared towards the end and it was dropping down for a finishing pass it kept going and probably would have went into the table had the screw.... that's right.... the screw hadn't stopped it. This is the same spot on the table where it had the exceeded soft limit issue. So I'm thinking there is a connection between the two. Weird thing is that program ran fine before and I didn't change anything that would have caused it. I checked it after it wrecked my bit and almost my router. Anyways, what could be causing this. I use cambam and EMC2.

[lwill]

Do you have homing switches and did you re-home the machine?
Sounds like you reset zero and/or home to your work piece, (possibly a few times?) and have worked your way out of the soft limit envelope.
Been that, done there.
Restart machine, re-home everything, set your zero offset and try again, IN AIR.
If it is ok, make sure you do not reset home, just reset zero to you work.
This is just my guess, since I installed home switches and try to properly re-home on each power up now, I have not had this problem unless I try to push the edge of the work envelope.
Hope it helps.

[DC-Modder]

Thanks for the reply! I actually just found out what happened. At least the part about hitting the screw. Turns out somehow the clearance plane got changed in that pocket to .5"! So I fixed that problem. I still haven't tackled the soft limit issue. I don't have homing switch's installed yet, but I do have some. Just need to find a way to mount them. I'm gonna have to make some brackets fom them.

[Mzones]

You need to set the soft limits in machine configuration , to match your machine's physical limitations.
Soft limits do the same thing as electrical limit switches, except through the software.

[DC-Modder]

So how do I set the soft limits in EMC2? I have the limits set for my table in the configuration. I've had no problems milling down to 0 before. Only when drilling holes. For a quick fix I set my maximum depth to .01" and that got rid of the message. Now I'm just curious as to why the message only when drilling.

[mactec54]

DC-Modder

You have something set up very wrong, You never have a positive number for going down ( .01 ), It should be always a negative number ( -.01 ) to go down

Part 0.00 or tool setting zero is the top of your part

[DC-Modder]

I'm sorry, you are correct. I do have it setup for -.01". The numbers are starting to blur together today