Taz 6 style Externally Accessable Y axis belt tensioner by piercet

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

This project is an externally accessable M4 bolt driven Y axis belt tensioner for the Taz 6 series printer. Co designed by Kevin Davis
It will not work with any other Taz. For older Taz, or to see the general idea of how this works, check out the Taz 1-5 Variant here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1656341
Photos provided courtesy Luke Marut and are used with permission, all photo copyrights remain with Luke, Thank you for letting me use them!
Basically you will need 1 m4 bolt , 1 m4 washer and M4 nyloc nut, 2 M3 heat set inserts, 3 1/4" smooth threaded spacers (probably the 1 inch long ones), 6 6-32 1/2" long bolts to fit those spacers, 5 6-32 Washers, and the stock idler hardware from your Taz. You will also potentially want 4 long-ish M3 metric bolts and nuts to temporarily bolt the drill guide in place and an at least 4mm drill bit.
One spacer gets bolted to the middle of the base, with the bolt head recessed. so as to not hit the mounting plate. The other two replace 2 of the stock M3 bolts and heat set inserts.
Instructions:
on the Idler mounting plate stripped of hardware, temporarily bolt the drill guide to the outside of the plate using M3 bolts and nuts and drill an at least 4mm dia hole (as long as an m4 bolt can pass through here you are ok). remove the guide and clean up the hole.
Use the M4 bolt and washer to pull the nyloc m4 nut into the new tensioner nut socket. then remove the bolt.
Assemble the idler pulley hardware.
insert the 2 heat set inserts into the baseplate
Bolt one of the 1/4" threaded spacers to the center-ish hole using one of the 6-32 bolts in the recess (after cleaning the hole)
bolt the base plate to the idler mount plate using 2 of the stock m3 bolts and washers in the heat set insert holes, and 2 of the 6-32 bolts and washers and nylon spacers in the other two holes.
Put the tensioner on the spacers, adjust for fit as needed.
thread the M4 bolt and washer from outside the plate into the tensioner.
Assemble the belt as usual, then use the M4 bolt to add tension
Put three 6-32 bolts and washers in the other end of the threaded spacers. In the event the M4 bolt ever did break for some reason, those washers would prevent the tensioner from flying forward into the machine guts.
Edit 1: If you happen to be using my Openbuilds Y axis parts, here is an adjusted endplate that will clear the tensioner bolt and washer. If you are using a more stock Taz you do not need that part.