MendelMax Vertical X Axis Ends & Carriage - 10mm Z

thingiverse

After successfully extracting the maximum possible Z height from my first MendelMax with its original carriages, I promptly dismantled it and sold its frame to fund a self-built Prusa i3 clone. A few months later, I acquired another MendelMax, thanks to the postal service, which destroyed many of the printer's plastic components during shipping. Since I had to replace the gantries anyway, I decided to install my previous vertical carriages onto this new printer. However, this machine came with 10mm smooth rods on the Z axis, so I modified my previous carriage design to accommodate the LM10UU bearings that it used. Rather than reprinting the Z tops and motor mounts, I opted to adapt my existing design to fit the new bearings. Surprisingly, the result is a functional printer, and I'm excited to share this updated design with you. The Z axis smooth rods are 10mm in diameter, but the lead screw mounts are designed for 8mm TR-8x2 brass nuts, with four-screw flanges for attachment. LM10UU or LM10LUU bearings should work well here, as do TR8 eBay leadscrews with flanged nuts. The rod distances (30mm smooth/leadscrew for Z and 50mm smooth/smooth for X) are the same as in the standard Mendel design, eliminating the need for customized motor mounts or upper vertex rod stays. The X carriage has holes designed to securely hold a metal NEMA 17 motor mount, which works well with Titan extruders. There is no provision for mounting an X axis end stop switch, so I'm reusing the existing one for this experiment. To get the LM10UU bearings seated correctly, you may need to file down or fit the overhang so that one of the bearings slides snugly into the circular hole next to the lead screw mounting holes. Use your preferred flavor of zip tie to keep the bearings in place. This modification gave me a clone Titan extruder and V6 hotend with 145mm of vertical height, which can be pushed to around 155mm if I don't home the axis before lowering it, sacrificing about 30mm of X. For Z, I've included an end stop screw mount that attaches to the X carriage's 8mm rods. It's designed to hit this Z end stop mount: XYZ End Stops for Mendelmax 1.5+. I used the "roundedRect" OpenSCAD module by WilliamAAdams and the excellent zip-tie LM8UU bearing holder by skarab, which I've added as remixes on the side and attributed in the included source code for the parts. You'll need skarab's STL file to fully render my SCAD source, and you'll need to update the file path in the source to point at your version. Until I'm finished rebuilding this particular MendelMax, consider this a Work in Progress and an experimental design. I don't believe I'll need to edit these carriages again, but it's better to be safe than sorry.