Quote Originally Posted by JAZZCNC View Post
....... However, it's not advised because then you still crash the machine into the ends.
Precisely!
I have one set of switches which double up as limit and homing switches. This is very easy to configure in LinuxCNC. Once the machine has homed itself the soft limits will prevent the limit switches from disabling the stepper drivers (most annoying!) even if I get the gantry out of the way by just pressing the LEFT button on the USB Nintendo game controller (er, sorry, meant to say "sophisticated manual pendant") until it stops.

As Hermione Granger (almost) said "Simple but effective".