TronXY P802MA servo Z probe for glass beds

thingiverse

I was hooked on printing with my work's ~$1K 3D printer. When I changed jobs, I bought a TronXY P802MA, a "Prusa knock-off", because it was affordable, came with a heated bed and an induction Z probe sensor. This great printer has been as good or better than the more expensive one and is very customizable. The one thing I really missed was a heated glass bed. Working with blue tape gets old quickly. I bought an inexpensive glass plate, but the inductive probe that came with the TronXY did not have enough range to work with the glass. I experimented with a capacitive sensor, which worked great with the glass, but it was inaccurate. I thought I would need to go to an 18mm inductive sensor when I saw aeropic's optical Z probe sensor and knew I had to make one. The original design didn't quite fit correctly with the P802MA's metal plate holding the print head assembly, so I modified it so the lower flange sits on the same side as the main body and fits in the gap between the back plate and the mounting plate. I also extended that flange so it connects with the X end stop sooner, giving a little more room for the IR sensor cable. Since I was modifying, I added mounting blocks for the servo motor and a support structure for them so you don't need to print with supports. I made the arm for the servo longer and the probe cover longer as the servo mount moves it back and over a bit. I'm using the TCST2103 IR sensor and a piece of coat hanger for the probe. I haven't really tweaked it to get optimum performance, but initially, it is outperforming the inductive sensor with the following M48 results: M48 Z-Probe Repeatability Test Finished! Mean: -0.392000 Min: -0.400 Max: -0.383 Range: 0.017 Standard Deviation: 0.0061052 I'd like to give a huge shout out to aeropic for the design, for using OpenSCAD (my favorite 3D design tool) and for including the OpenSCAD source files!