DIY Touchplate for a CNC Router

This is a quick and dirty touchplate I made for my DIY CNC router. It's a piece of plywood with aluminum tape and some aluminum strips on two sides. This tool allows for automatic zero positioning of the router.

[sz]

Thanks for sharing this and your shop-built CNC machine. I understand the touch plate has the x, y, and Z offsets from the corner of your workpiece, but on the software side, how does it know to move down to touch the top, then move to each side, and then calculate the ZERO origin by subtracting these offsets? Another thing, a spiral cutting router bit may touch one side on a high spot of the spiral, and a low spot on the other side of the touch plate. How does this affect the zero calculations? Thank you.

[jeffalessi]

Is a Student Version of your software available? Thank You!