Wiring Part II - Printing in Plastic: Build Your Own 3D Printer - page 348

Figure 18-26. The endstop's pushbutton will be pressed by a second #6 nut.
After adding the endstops, it's time to connect them to the motherboard, but before you do that, we
need to make a change to the 3D printer's naming conventions and explain why.
Axis Naming Conventions
Up to this point in the topic, we've been referring to the table as the X axis, the left-to-right movement of
the ZY Plate as the Y axis, and the up-down motion of the lead screw as the Z-axis. This was an early
naming convention used by Patrick based on earlier designs of his CNC machines where a CNC
machine's tabletop was called the X-axis and the left-to-right movement was called the Y-axis. It's not
wrong, but it's not exactly right, either.
When it comes to the standards used in the 3D printing community, it turns out we've got our X
and Y axes reversed. If you wish to communicate with other 3D printer users (such as Makerbot or
RepRap owners) and print their shared designs with your own machine, you'll want to make certain
you're talking the same language—and that means making a few simple changes to how this machine is
wired up.