PRIME MOTIONSoft limits and travel
Travel is how far each axis can physically move. Soft limits are the controller refusing to go past that in software, before a limit switch or a hard stop has to.
Where the numbers come from
Your machine profile carries travel figures for the model and variant you chose, and the controller carries its own. Where they disagree, the controller's are the truth — it is the thing actually moving.
That is why picking the right variant during setup matters: the same model in a larger bed size has different travel, and a profile built on the wrong one describes a machine you do not own.
Why they need homing
Soft limits are expressed in machine coordinates, and machine coordinates only exist after a homing cycle. Before homing, the controller's idea of position is whatever it happened to be at power-on — so a limit at "X = 810" refers to nothing in particular.
This is the reason for the homing gate: not caution for its own sake, but that every protection downstream is written in a coordinate system that does not exist yet.
What the app checks before you cut
When a program loads, Prime Motion reads every move in it and compares it against your machine:
| Finding | Level |
|---|---|
| A move crosses the soft limits | Critical |
| A move goes deeper than the configured maximum cut depth | Critical |
| A move comes within the margin of a soft limit — 5 mm by default | Warning |
| A rapid ends below the work surface | Warning |
The result is on the Safety button in the viewport, and the offending moves are coloured in the toolpath so you can see where the trouble is. See The safety scan.
