Tronxy x5sa-400 3-Z Upgrade Including Stepper Mount and Leadscrew Adapters

thingiverse

Two adapters and a motor mount are needed to upgrade the tronxy x5sa-400 to a 3z setup. Two adapters must be installed to set the t8 leadscrew nuts, and one for the bearing. This design uses all the original holes, but swaps two leadscrews for the two 8mm rods, moving one 8mm rod and bearing to the middle hole. See the picture with the red boxes for overall layout. Needed hardware includes: twelve M3x12 socket head screws, twelve M3 nuts, a 500mm t8 leadscrew and nut (which must be cut down slightly), a Nema 17 motor and coupler, and hardware to drive three independent z stepper motors. Two M4x10 screws and two M4 t-nuts are also required. The original hardware should be re-used. Two M3x40 flat head screws are needed as well. Prints should have at least 50% infill; 70% would be even better, as they need to be strong. The adapters might require a slight bit filed down on the inside to ensure they don't scrape the leadscrews. Insert hex nuts into the bottom of the adapters, using a screw to set them in place, taking care that they go in straight. If the nuts don't go in straight, you will have to print more adapters. When mounting the stepper, remove only two motor screws; if you disassemble the stepper motor, you can demagnetize it and lose torque. Then use the 2 M3x40 screws to go through the mount and the motor. To mount the 8mm smooth rod, use the two pillow block bearings mounted on top of the two original leadscrews. I'm not convinced that the 8mm smooth rod is needed on the side with two leadscrews; it may just lead to additional binding. More experimentation is needed. I initially had larger, more complicated plans to do a 3z setup, but after assembling the printer, it was plain that it could be done more simply with printed adapters and the original holes. I'm running klipper on the stock board with an additional arduino board and cnc shield v3 to run the 3 z stepper drivers. It works great, but would also work fine (with a different board) on marlin. Freecad design files are provided.