Universal XY Carriage Adapter for Orbiter Extruder, BLT, Dragon/Dragonfly BMO by ijwoo1

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

Mounting adapter for Oribter Extruder v1.5, and Phaetus/Triangle Labs Dragon or Dragonfly BMO hotend and a universal 20mm V slot carriage plate.. It uses the 4020 fan duct (RIGHT) from here
I opted to replace the original carriage plate on an Ender 5 with a universal 20mm gantry V slot plate because it is widely available, it's cheap and I thought it would be easier to design for. I also hoped it might result in a more rigid mounting. It is not as wide, so I had to replace the original Ender 5 belt.
It does not use a groove mount, instead it uses the 4x threaded mounting holes found on the Phaetus/Triangle Labs Dragon and Dragonfly BMO. With the latter, it will be rotated by about 15 degrees which plays with my OCD but it works fine and clears the FAN duct. For the Dragonfly BMO I did have to trim the heater block's silicon boot.
Hotend cooling uses a standard 30mm Axial fan
All up weight, including the carriage plate came in 50g lighter than the BMG based head that it replaced. I can't recall the actual weight
At some point I'll provide a list of the fixings needed. It's worth noting that the middle pair of bolts that secure the adapter to the carriage plate needs a countersink bolt head, inserted from the back of the Carriage plate and secured with a washer/nut on the front face because there is limited clearance between the carriage plate and the V-slot extrusion rail.
I didn't use supports, but that did mean the adapter benefitted from running a drill bit through the holes after printing. Other than that no post printing modifications are required.
It is a little fiddly to assemble, next time I'd make use of threaded inserts or use embedded nuts.
There are 3 STL files to print. The main adapter, the top fan bracket for the hotend cooling fan and a 2mm shim for the BL Touch.
The unit is compact enough not to limit the XY travel. The full 220mm of the Ender 5 bed is available.
The only real compromise is the distance between the hotend and the extruder, it uses the standard Orbiter casing which means the stepper motor has to clear the top of the carriage plate. I didn't want the weight of the extruder hanging forward. The advantage is that it's well balanced but you'll need a piece of 4mm bowden tube , 52mm long, inserted into the Dragonfly BMO.
There is plenty of room for improvement, but for a first design not using Tinkercad, it's perfectly functional.
I used Color Fabb XT-CF 20 because it looks good, has reasonably high glass temperature and results in a light, rigid part.
Use M851 X-51.00 Y-5.00 to configure the probe offset from the nozzle.