I have seen many videos where the reviewer has complained that the gantry travel is such that it cannot reach the homing switches, and that there are no limit switches on the other side. I was wondering if instead of using blade type switches, using magnetic or near field switches would be better?
It’s been spoken about a few times, but the switches on the stock X-carve are definitely “homing” switches, not limits. Once the homing cycle is finished, they are turned off and not paid any attention to by the controller afterwards. You can enable them to be REAL limit switches (and add them to the other end as well, if you would like) but the stock wiring will need to have shielded cable and a low-pass filter added to prevent noise from causing false positives. There is simply a GRBL variable you swap to turn them into actual hard limits.
I use soft limits, myself, and home. For the purpose, I have had no trouble at all with the stock roller-snap switches. They have the major advantage of being really cheap. I picked up a pack of ten as replacements for about three bucks (I broke my Z limit by being stupid - sent a 10" move command to the Z, instead of the Y, totally not the machine’s fault!)
EDIT: I’ve seen people complain about that, and it has been universally a case of them forgetting to install the cap screws into the rail slots to activate the limits. They don’t hit the end plates to activate, they hit a socket-head-cap-screw attached by a post-assembly T-nut in the side-rail of the makerslide. The only one activated by direct plate contact like that is the Z, which touches against the top of the Z-carriage. 