My 5th, and most useful, print to date

[Ender5r]

Yesterday, I finished printing and post-processing a gift for my daughter's upcoming birthday.

Some of you may recall my previous post about it. Here's a few photos:



The left 2 photos are, as you can see, the actual lettering, which is printed separately from the tray, which has cutouts to hold the letters. The photo to the right is the first assembled one. I used Gorilla Micro Precision crazy glue to install the lettering. There are now 2 of them, and we'll give them to her in the next few days.

[Vassili Finellis]

Very beautyfull gift, indeed! Dou you experience Z wobbling? As i see in the second prespective photo.

[Ender5r]

It's an Ender 5, so I don't think wobble from a moving bed is an issue. However, I have noticed that the front of the bed can move slightly during a print, which is annoying. I call it vibration rather than wobble.

I wish I could just buy the complete Ender 5 Z axis sub-assembly, so I could mount it at the front of the printer and use it to stabilize the print bed. Short of that I found a pretty nice looking reinforcement technique on TV: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4558463. All I have to do is get to Home Depot to buy some threaded rod and hex coupling nuts, then print the adapters. Hopefully, that would remove most of the vibration I see in during printing. At the moment, I take care to print everything as close to the back of the bed as possible, as near to the bed attachment point as I can.

[Vassili Finellis]

Is your ender 5 bed just like the pictures in the link?

[Vassili Finellis]

If yes, then it is very easy to convert / upgrade it for less money

[Ender5r]

It's a stock Ender 5 except that I have converted it to semi-direct drive and relocated the filament spool holder. IOW, the print bed is unaltered. I know there are 3rd party ways to add a 2nd Z axis, but it would just be so much simpler to add a stock Z axis assembly.

[Vassili Finellis]

Listen, it is very easy to upgrade it! Even if the board gives only one Z axis.

[Ender5r]

Yes. I am aware that 2 Z stepper motors can be run from 1 Z stepper driver, although I suspect a MOSFET is needed to provide enough juice to drive both motors. I haven't looked into it deeply, but I have found out that 2 Z connections on the control board are not needed.

One thing I wonder about is just how much difference it will actually make. I haven't looked into that very deeply either.

[Geit]

I printed the slightly smaller version already 4 times. It basically has no back end. Prints way faster, less plastic and it is easier to get games in and out.

https://www.thingiverse.com/make:719777

To be fair I printed a lot of Nintendo Switch accessory's. Controller stands, Amiibo Wall Mounts and stands, GameCard case inlays to keep 10 games in one case. Colored grips for my ProController. A big grip for playing handheld, JoyCon Grips,

The last big project of mine was designing my own VR Headset for the Nintendo Switch. I now can watch 3D YouTube Videos and Play Zelda VR without even owning the original ToyCon VR Kit.

Yes. I am aware that 2 Z stepper motors can be run from 1 Z stepper driver, although I suspect a MOSFET is needed to provide enough juice to drive both motors. I haven't looked into it deeply, but I have found out that 2 Z connections on the control board are not needed.

One thing I wonder about is just how much difference it will actually make. I haven't looked into that very deeply either.

This looks quite like the forklift bed mount my TronXY X5 had. I added two rods and an additional lead screw, which I connected with the original one by a belt. It fixed all issues and prints are now great!

This stupid forklift design is ruining all benefits you gain from core xy.

[Ender5r]

This looks quite like the forklift bed mount my TronXY X5 had. I added two rods and an additional lead screw, which I connected with the original one by a belt. It fixed all issues and prints are now great!

This stupid forklift design is ruining all benefits you gain from core xy.

How did you take care of the extra load on the stepper motor?

[Geit]

How did you take care of the extra load on the stepper motor?

Well, there isn´t additional load at all. The bed is still the same. Yes, it just got a few grams heavier do to the lead screw mount, the two bearings and some plastic. That is next to nothing.

The bed is no longer hanging and the bearings create far less friction as they did before, since the angled side forces are gone. In fact they now should cause nearly no friction at all. This alone should be enough to compensate for the additional weight of the new parts.

Since a belt is joining both lead screws, it works like one and the force gets shared equally. Instead of turning one rod it just turns two lead screws requiring basically the same energy as before. Just the little friction caused by the additional lead screw gets added to the mix.

To sum it up. I did nothing to compensate extra load as there is no extra load to compensate

[Ender5r]

Interesting. To do this I would need:

1. 2 rods, ideally the same diameter as the originals, I guess they could be different, as long as the guide sleeves have matching diameter;
2. 1 lead screw, 800 steps per mm. Not sure what thread count and pitch that would be;
3. anti-backlash nuts: not sure if it's 1 or 3 (i.e. lead screw only or lead screw and guide rods?);
4. top and bottom mounting brackets, possibly 3D printed (PETG?);
5. an adapter plate to connect the new rods and screw to the existing bed, also possibly 3D printed;
6. 2 toothed pulleys: one for the original lead screw, and one for the new;
7. a toothed belt to connect the 2 pulleys;
8. various bolts and nuts to connect everything.

Anything else?

[Geit]

A GT2 pulley without tooth, to act as a belt tensioner.

This is the kit which I luckily found back then. Here is my make with a lot of images I took during the conversion:
https://www.thingiverse.com/make:588144

Just to give you a hint how it could be done. Basically the complete Z mount gets mirrored to the other side.

[Ender5r]

It's interesting that there's an actual conversion kit. Did the belt come with the kit? I'm curious because I can't imagine buying a length of belt and trying to join the ends together once the length is determined.

[Geit]

There was no kit. I just bought the identical rods and a lead screw plus the other stuff. I chose a belt which was a little longer than twice the distance of the lead screws. The closest I got was about 10cm longer than needed. The kit was just the printed parts to install them.

If you look onto the pictures I added to the link above, you see a large t-shaped object with one pulley at the tip. That is the tensioner. You loop the belt around the axis and then move the tensioner to one side until the belt it tight.