Learn/GcodePilot/Automation & safety
Travel Limits & Bounds Check
At a glance
- Signed per-axis travel defines the work envelope and homing direction in one setting
- Pre-run 3D bounds check expands the whole program and blocks a run that would leave the envelope — names the axis and worst line
- Load-time warning, run-time block, plus a live per-line guard and probe clamp
- Jog clamping keeps manual moves inside the envelope, homed or not
One signed Travel value per axis, in the machine's Axes settings, defines the whole work envelope.
Home is always machine zero; the magnitude is the travel distance and the sign is the direction the
axis works from home — X = 40 gives an envelope of 0 to +40, a plasma Z of −6 gives −6 to 0 with
home at the top. A travel of 0 means unlimited (that axis is simply not checked). Every consumer reads
this one setting: the firmware translation (max travel and homing
direction), the 3D envelope wireframe in the scene, jog clamping,
and the bounds check.
Jogging can't leave it
Jog targets are clamped to the envelope on the app side: continuous jogging plans its deceleration to stop at the boundary, and step and click-jog targets are clipped to it. Because the clamp is host-side, it works on a machine with no limit switches and before homing — independent of, and in addition to, the firmware's own soft limits once homed. Editing travel updates the clamp live, no reconnect needed.
The pre-run bounds check
Before a program runs, GcodePilot expands it through the RS274NGC engine and checks every motion target — rapids included, in full 3D machine coordinates — against the envelope. At load an overshoot is a non-blocking warning; at Run it blocks, naming the offending axes and the worst-overshoot line so the fix is one search away. It works entirely offline. During execution two backstops remain: a per-line guard aborts the job before any out-of-envelope line reaches the controller, and probe targets are clamped to the envelope instead of aborted — so a touch-off routine can safely probe "the full Z travel" without tripping the guard.