Homing, stall vs limit switches

I just read in another thread about the accuracy (or lack thereof) of stall homing vs limit switches.

I haven’t even received my 4man yet so all I have is “book knowledge” of the machine so far but I know it has optical sensors for hard limits. What I didn’t know is that these are not used for homing (?).
Someone was referring to a Jay Bates method of one time homing and a machine file, and someone else mentioned adding limit switches for homing.

Is this correct? Are the optical sensors just to prevent collision? What I gathered from that discussion is that the stall homing is what makes X/Y probing necessary because 0,0 isn’t consistent.

I added limit switches to my laser to get homing working and man, what a whole new game that was. Unless i want to start the job elsewhere in the workspace, I can start it at the front left and that is always dead on 0,0.

The elite has optical sensor for homing. Homing allows the machine to know where one end of the rail is. Once it knows that (elite accuracy for this is microns) it uses the ‘soft limit’ numbers in the controller that are preset to know how far down it can jog to the other end before hitting the end of the rail.

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OK so my initial impression was correct and i just let that other post confuse me.

You guys are really on it with the support!

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