PRIME MOTIONThe homing gate
When a controller powers on, it does not know where the machine is. It counts from wherever the gantry happened to be. Homing drives each axis to its switch and sets a known machine origin, and from then on every coordinate means something: travel limits, saved positions and safe retracts all depend on it.
Until the machine has been homed since it connected, Prime Motion holds back everything that could move or power it. That is the homing gate.
What waits, and what does not
| Waits for homing | Always available with a machine profile |
|---|---|
| Projects, Macros and History tabs | Control, Design, Tools, Wizards, Help, Settings |
| Jogging, Probe, the Location card's moves | Home in the command rail |
| Starting a program | The Air Run and Mesh selections |
| Save Pos and Load Pos | Reading the position readout |
| Console lines that move or power the machine | E-STOP, Stop, Hold |
Control stays open on purpose: its Home button is how you open the gate. Design, Wizards and Help move nothing and are never gated.
A dim control keeps its place. Nothing appears or disappears as the gate opens; the controls simply come alive.
If you try something that would move the machine before homing, Prime Motion refuses with the reason: the machine has not been homed this session, so it does not know where it is, and the pointer Home the machine with Home on the Control screen's command rail, then try again.
Open the gate
- Make sure the machine is connected: the state tag on Control shows the controller's state, not Offline.
- Clear the machine. Homing moves every axis toward its switches.
- Tap Home in the command rail. The Home all axes drawer shows the machine's bed.
- Tap Home in the drawer. While the machine moves, the button shows progress and Cancel is unavailable.
- When the cycle finishes, the drawer closes and the gated tabs and controls come alive. HOMING NOTES in the drawer records what happened.
Machines without homing switches
Some machines have no homing switches, and their controller has homing turned off. For them, Prime Motion does not demand a cycle the machine cannot run:
- The machine is ready to work as soon as it connects. The gated tabs and jogging are available.
- The Notes card on Control says No homing switches — Jog freely; set work zero manually.
- Save Pos, Load Pos and Job Recovery still wait for a homed machine. A saved machine position is meaningless without a machine origin, because the controller's coordinates start wherever the machine was when it powered on.
If your profile expects homing switches but the controller has homing turned off ($22=0), the Notes card says so, and Settings → Firmware offers to settle the disagreement on either side. See Supported controllers.
When the gate closes again
The machine counts as homed for the current connection. Disconnecting, or starting a new homing cycle, closes the gate until the cycle completes. An alarm does not close the tabs, but jogging and starting wait until the alarm is cleared; see E-STOP, feed hold and reset.
Why it cannot be turned off
Travel limits, saved positions and safe retracts all assume a machine origin the controller actually established. An unreferenced coordinate is not a reliable place to send a cutter, so there is no setting that disables the gate.