Z-Sensor Bracket for Behind Front Fan by TalonGrayson

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

TL;DR: 12mm and 18mm Sensor brackets which fits between the blower fan and extruder housing.
18mm: X offset = -20, Y offset = -57, BACK_PROBE_BED_POSITION = 163
12mm: X offset = -17, Y offset = -56, BACK_PROBE_BED_POSITION = 164
Update:
As requested, I have added a 12mm version. I don't own a 12mm sensor to try it with, but it should work (if you try it, please let me know in the comments whether it worked). The offsets for the 12mm version are: -17, -56 (x, y) and you'll be able to set your BACK_PROBE_BED_POSITION to 164 as a result.
So, in preparation for adding a z-levelling sensor (18mm diameter) to my Anet A8, I went on a hunt for a suitable bracket. There are lots of great designs out there but everything I found which could fit my printer head had been designed to use the heatsink screws as a fixture. Nothing wrong with that, per sé, but I didn't really want to be moving my sensor every time I change filament, and I find removing the fan and heatsink is the easiest and fastest way to change the filament.
So, I designed a bracket which fits behind the blower fan at the front of the print head. I had to use 2 (luckily spare) of the M3 allen key headed screws in place of the ones which came as stock, as they are a couple of mm longer, but as you can see from the images, it all holds together nicely.
It's a nice and simple design, and it seems to work (the sensor hasn't fallen off, anyway, so that's nice).
I had to edit the offsets for the sensor (I am using Skynet v2.3.1 at the time of writing) to -20, -57 (x, y) and I had to update the BACK_PROBE_BED_POSITION variable in Skynet's Arduino sketch to accommodate (I set it to 160 but 163 would be more precise).