Mini Announcement - Homing switches

Hi Guys n Gals

We have now put the proximity homing switches into the store. They can be found here:

:slight_smile:

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All I can say is, “about time” and “a little too late”. I was so excited for these since the early whispers I heard in the beginning of 2020. I understand y’all are busy, you have to plan big, and COVID is a distracting force for everything, but PwnCNC beat you to the market and I jumped in with those.

I don’t say this to be negative or positive towards either company. I like all of the products you both make, and I don’t stray much outside of these 2 brands. But I feel that it’s important to get customer feedback in situations like this so that you know how your customers are anticipating and how they are buying.

I can’t wait to see the next innovation up Carbide3D’s sleeve!

ordered… lets see how quickly the friends at UPS can drive from IL to Oregon :slight_smile:

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btw the website does not yet list them under the shapeoko group of accessories, only under “all”

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I too had trouble finding them. I had signed up for the email when they were available and the email link took me directly to the xxl switches

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I assume that the plan is to stock these long term? I had an initial failure of my z limit switch when I first had my HD-Z (it’s been about a year ago, so many hours on the machine since with no issues) but I haven’t had any issues since. So, I would consider just waiting it out to see if I have any other issues. Otherwise, if these are likely to go quick and not be carried much after, I’ll buy them and stash them away. My other issue is that I believe I have an old board (original Shapeoko XL from 2016 I think), and I’m not sure what I’d need to do to make it all work. Thanks for any recommendations!

Yep, these are planned to be stocked for a long time now.

@mharper90 I have been pushing these since beaver days and scaling up is hard work. We had to work them into production machines then back fill it into accessories and an upgrade kit which is harder to do than it sounds.

Now we have them, and are ontop of them it should be BAU. These are very high quality switches and mounting hardware which is significantly stronger than 3d printed bits. Further more you can count on us for support if any problems did crop up.

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For an old board you’ll need to update to a new one which includes the expansion adapter. As noted though, we’ll have these available for the long haul. Moreover, the parts are the same as for current production machines, so we’ll need them for warranty and so forth.

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Yeah, scaling a good idea up to volume production is hard, it’s a skill set and discipline all of it’s own, ask Colin Chapman or Elon Musk.

So… dumb question, perhaps. At the moment, I am not having any issues with my mechanical limit switches. Is the benefit here that proximity switches are less likely to fail?

Or to put a question another way–is there any benefit to using proximity switches over a functioning set of mechanical switches?

Not really, the precision limit is still plus/minus one-half of a 1/8 micro-step (or, doing the math: 1/80th of a mm)

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I ordered a new controller about a month ago and received it and installed. I ordered the new switches yesterday and got shipping confirmation today.

So should the controller I just installed be ready for the new switches.

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Yes, we’ve been shipping boards with the expansion adapter for well over a year now. You should also have a BitRunner connector, so good to go on all the goodies.

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How much is the updated board, or do I need to send a message for that information? Thanks!

Contact us at support@carbide3d.com — they’ve also been bundled with some of the upgrades, at least the BitRunner.

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@osu22go Which version board? I may be able to help you out.

I had a flakey usb port. My machine was 2016 so it had a good board but flakey. The new board was $99.00 plus tax free shipping.

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I just ordered mine yesterday.

I do have a complaint though.

I looked at the installation document and It is very hard to get around having 2 pages side by side in the browser. And in Acrobat reader is no better. Having to scroll sideways is a real mess when you have to zoom in on it to see the pictures and read the text.

I’m not sure why it was done this way. All the other documentation I’ve seen is one page per page on PDFs.

I just noticed the PDF file name has “smaller” in it. Is there one that is regular size?

Thanks,

Jeffery

I just looked. Not side by side for me.
Zoomed out to prove it:

Take a look around your Acrobat, you may have 2 page setup. I often print in “booklet” form to get multiple pages on a single page of paper.

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