Ender 3 - Dual Z mod

thingiverse

**Dual Z Mod for Two Motors - Either on a Single Driver or Dual Driver** **Important!** I recommend using metal spacers for durability, but if you prefer to use plastic ones, make sure to print them with a high-quality material. You'll need at least two additional spacers to complete the setup. **Non-Stock Parts Needed - Stock Bracket Replacement** - 1x M8 washer (to place under the eccentric nut so it doesn't wear through the plastic) - Suitable motor (NEMA17, get one like the ones on the Ender 3) **Non-Stock Parts Needed - Second Z Bracket** - Z leadscrew - Leadscrew nut (these usually come with the leadscrews when you buy them, but make sure) - Z coupler (I got a spring coupler to allow for a little play in case everything doesn't like up perfectly, but I made this design directly on the Ender 3 CAD file from Creality so it should line up perfectly) **How Do I Align the Two Motors?** Aligning the two motors is essential to getting the most out of dual Z. And your printer. There are two techniques I suggest - one for dual driver and one for single driver. * **Dual Driver:** For dual driver, you can auto align your Z axis with the G34 Marlin command. This makes your printer probe Z1, then Z2, calculate the difference and move the motors to try and line them up. It repeats this 3 times or until the deviance is at 0.1mm or below. Repeat the command until the Z axis is aligned. * **Single Driver:** For single driver you can't use G34 as the printer cannot move the two motors independantly this way. That's where the Z stabilisers come in. Make sure the Z axis stabilisers are all the way at the top, lining up with the bottom of the extrusion keeping the sides where they're supposed to be. **Two Drivers?** Yes, you can run this mod with two drivers, and that also means two motors able to run seperately. This is a double edged sword. On the one hand, doing it like this will allow you to put less strain on your stepper motor. It will also allow you to use a BLTouch or similar probe to automatically align your two Z motors. But on the other hand, if your Z1 motor skips steps but Z2 doesn't this can lead to your motors going out of sync and becoming misaligned during printing. You can attempt to fix this with syncing belts at the top, and it truly shouldn't be a huge issue, but it's something to keep in mind. **Single Driver** For single driver you can't use G34 as the printer cannot move the two motors independantly this way. That's where the Z stabilisers come in. Make sure the Z axis stabilisers are all the way at the top, lining up with the bottom of the extrusion keeping the sides where they're supposed to be. Even if you didn't add bearings to the stabilisers, you should still install them. Then you just move your Z axis all the way up to the top of the printer and using increments of 1mm you keep moving the Z axis up intil the first side crashes into the z stabiliser(yes, this is not a joke, your stepper motors can handle gentle stalling like that). Then keep moving until the second side also crashes into the stabiliser. Once both sides have crashed into the stabilisers and are stalling, your Z motors are now aligned and ready to move back down.