Prusa X Carriage with integrated Z Probe and Fan Holder by mblaster

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

A new x carriage for prusa style printers (rod distance 50mm) with integrated z probe and fan holder. The arm of the retractable probe is designed to press against the carriage so the probe does not change its z position over time.
The carriage runs on 4 lm8uu bearings which are ziptied for easy removal. A 40mm fan can be attached on one side. A retractable z probe (just a 9g servo and a microswitch required) fixes all your bed leveling problems. On the back side the carriage has the same mount for an extension as the original carriage made by jonaskuehling.
Your hotend needs to be long enough to print without the fan holder touching the build plate and short enough not to crash while z probing. I have a hexagon hotend mounted with the supplied aluminum bracket on top of the carriage.
The z probe has completely eliminated the need for any kind of z calibration since it is properly set up. Now it is just a button press to print.
There is still a minor issue present in the current design. The servo motor is held only by a single screw and tends to wobble around a bit, but as the arm is pressed against the carriage the probing precision is still really good.