Hi Vertigo72,
I am on the same page where I zero stepper on purpose. Were you able to find the cause of steps skipping? I experience it a lot, I am not even moving fast but overtime it causes stepper to get stuck of miss steps etc. My project is batter operated and can't use optical sensor as it will consume milli amps. I might look for some feather touch mechanical switch as end switch but not sure whether zeroing it to the end is really causing the issue or it is just the bad quality of steppers...
Thanks