 Dual Z on an Ender 3? Let's do it. My name is Jim and this is the edge of tech. So recently I just did the printer mods direct drive upgrade on my Ender 3. There have been a lot of comments in the notes of that video saying that this is too much weight on the gantry and it could cause sagging. So I reached out to Tim at TH3D and they just released their Ender 3 dual Z upgrade kit. Perfect timing. He sent me one over and we're gonna install it today right on this Ender 3. So why would we want to do that? Well, it's gonna help eliminate the ex-gantry sagging that people are saying that this upgrade makes. Now it's been proven that these things stock can print really really good. But why not spend some money and make it print even better? A couple cool things about this. It works with the standard or the pro. So you don't have to worry about which version of the Ender 3 you have. It has a 90 day warranty from TH3D. If you have any issues in that 90 day warranty, they'll hook you up. All you got to do is contact them and say, hey, I got this from you and this is what's going on. Enough talk. Let's get this package opened up and let's see what's inside. So as you can see, it all comes very nicely sealed in this plastic, which is really cool to see from TH3D. They got a new machine. It can seal everything and that looks really professional. Okay, so in the package, you should get everything you see here. There should be four M4 screws with T-nuts for the bearings and those are actually already installed in here. And those are for the bearing blocks. Not to mention the two bearing blocks right here with the bearings pre-installed, which is pretty cool. Two M3 screws with T-nuts and washers for the belt pulley right here. Then you get three M5 spacers and three M5 screws for the gantry bracket wheels. You also get a tensioner bracket right here with a tensioner pulley. You also get another M8 pulley. You also get the Z-Rod, the belt, and an all-metal dual Z bracket that already has the brass nut and the two M3 screws in there. So that's everything you get in the package. Let's get to the install. So the first thing we need to do is go ahead and make sure that your filament is removed from the machine. I just went ahead and cut mine. You can heat it up and pull it out as well if you want to do that. So make sure the filament's removed. We need to relocate our power supply here. I'm going to set mine on the desk next to it for now, but I'm also, during the first print, going to print the relocation file. And there's a bunch of files right on the page of the instructions on this. So you can actually go link them and you can print a file that moves this over for you and then it's attached still, but it's over here. For me today, I'm going to go ahead and remove these two screws with the Allen wrench that came with the kit. And then I'm going to set my power supply right on the side here. When you do take the power supply off, you want to make sure your X gantry is all the way up as well. Now go to your left gantry where we're going to add the new dual Z2 and we're going to remove these two wheels. To do that, there is a nut on the back. Go ahead and hold that with a vice grips or a pliers or a wrench, whatever you have, and then take your supplied Allen wrench and take these two wheels off. Now we have these two wheels removed and I did use the small end of my double sided wrench to get those off. Please note that we are going to use everything again except for this bolt. Now what we're going to do is go ahead and remove these two bolts and that'll release the left carriage here right off the X gantry. Now you want to hold it when you get this last bolt because as soon as you do this is going to be free and it'll come off. Now that we have this plate removed, remove this wheel the same way you did the other two. Remember we're going to save all the parts except for the bolt. Something to note that this last wheel is the eccentric nut. Now what we're going to do is put this carriage back together. The first step in that would be putting our eccentric nut and wheel back on. What we need to do that is one of the longer bolts that came in the kit, one of the spacers that came in the kit, the existing eccentric nut, the wheel and the washer. So take your new bolt and put the washer on there. Then take this and push the bolt into the back side so it looks like that. Now if you look at it like this it kind of looks like a J and that's how we need it. So the eccentric nut is next and we're going to put the flange side in like this, then your wheel, then a spacer and then what we need is we need to take the other gantry and put it in the second hold down just like we did on the first one like that. So what we have here before I tighten it is we have our screw going through with the washer on this side, then your eccentric nut with the flange in, then your wheel, then a spacer that came with the dual Z kit and then your lock washer. Tighten it in but not extremely tight right now because the wheel still needs to move and we want to put the other wheels in and get it straightened. So now I have it snug but not all the way tight and you can see this is what it looks like. A tab here for your new Z rod, your eccentric nut up here and what we're going to do next is reattach this to the frame. So take the piece we just put together and slide it right behind. Now in this side just like it came off and just like we put it together there's a little divot in the frame for that screw and make sure that screw sits in that divot. Now take the two bolts that came out of the frame originally to remove the frame piece and put them in. Something to note about these two bolts you want to get them snug but do not over tighten them. We're actually going to be adjusting the X gantry and you want to be able to do that a little bit with those bolts. Next thing you want to do is just slide that down just a hair like this on one side and we're going to reattach these two wheels and by moving that down a little bit it actually makes it easier to put the wheels in. Now we need to reinstall these two wheels. First we're going to start with the bolt then we're going to take the spacer that came with the printer then the wheel then the new spacer that came with the kit and we're going to do both wheels like that. So line that bolt up push the or line this bracket up slowly and then push your bolts through and we're going to take the last two lock washers and install them on this side. Take your wrench vice grips or whatever you're using for the lock washers and then your allen wrench and tighten these up but do not over tighten them these wheels still need to move and slide up and down. Now we want to look at the bracket and the X Gantry and just make sure they're flushed together and they're level here. If they're not that means your X Gantry actually could be crooked up or down so just make sure that when you put this together it's all flush and level. If you didn't have that go ahead and loosen these two bolts just a little bit make them flush and level and tighten those bolts back in. Next we want to adjust these two bolts right here just to assure that this is just a little loose so the Z rod can slide through it fine. Now when I got mine I noticed that the brass was actually on top which is upside down. I took it off I put the brass to the bottom and I put my screws back in. Now we're just going to take our allen wrench and it's tight right now and we're going to loosen it one full turn. You see how that's a little loose so the Z rod will travel through there. We might tighten that a half a turn later but right now I like that. Now pop the end cap off if you have one. Grab one of the bearing blocks here make sure your t-nuts are loose. Turn them so they're flush and flat and put them in. Now the bearing should be up in the top here. Take an allen wrench and spin those kind of quickly and those t-nuts should lock on. So I did not tighten it yet but it's in there and the t-nuts are locked in. Now with that bearing block installed what we want to do is go ahead and lower our x-gantry. So I'm going to go ahead and do it with my thumb here. We want to find something like this mini roll of filament here that I got with the Nr5 to put underneath the x-gantry because what we're going to do is loosen the top screw here of our grub screw and we're going to take the factory or the stock Z rod out and we're going to use it on this side. So what we need is something to hold your x-gantry from crashing and you want to be very careful because you don't want that to happen. Next loosen the top grub screw then remove the existing Z rod push it down through the bearing block that we just installed and then screw it down into this carriage right here. Now that it's pushed in what we want to do is make sure this bearing block is straight and your Z rod is straight up and down and tighten it in. It will hang over the edge just slightly when it's perfectly straight. Now grab the pulley that came with the kit and set it on top of that Z screw and lower your Z screw on this side just so it's flush with the top of your new pulley just about like that. Tighten the two grub screws in now we have the two grub screws tightened the Z rod here it's flush with the top of the pulley and that's going to hold it so it doesn't fall anymore. Something to note there is a grub screw locked right in here what it does is it keeps the bearing in the block if your bearing pushes out press it back in and go ahead and tighten this grub screw here. Now grab the other bearing block just like we did before and we're going to install it on the right side so pull that cap off the right side get your grub screws ready just like we did before slide them in use your allen wrench here to spin them kind of quickly and they'll lock themselves in it will overhang just a little bit like we did with the other one with this just a little loose take the new Z rod that came with the kit and push it down through now it should slide nicely you want to screw it down into the carriage here as long as it's straight as you see it'll actually slide right down make sure it's nice and bottomed out maybe raise your gantry up and then as you set it back down the Z rod will come down as you set it back down you'll hear it bottom out take your allen wrench tighten the top of the grub screw here and then double check the bottom to make sure that one's tight now take the other pulley and set it on top of the other lead screw and tighten in your grub screws just like we did before do not over tighten though you don't want to strip the pulley out now take the included belt make sure it is all untangled and straight and the teeth are on the inside and put it over these two pulleys so take the tensioner that came with it and install the two t nuts in and you want to make sure that the washer is on the top and we're going to set that in the extrusion here and uh we want to leave them loose right now so it should be roughly in the front in the in the center and it should face the front of the machine spin those in and and make sure that that now locks into place i'm just going to make sure that stays but i'm not going to tighten it too much and make sure that the pulley is facing the front of this machine so this is the front of machine now i removed my spool holder so you guys can see this throw your belt around that pulley just like this now you should have what looks like a triangle with your belt going around all three pulleys so i zoomed in a little bit and as you can see we have our triangle now this is your belt tensioner here and what we need to do is tension the belt um by pulling this forward and back so we're going to pull this forward so the belt as you tight as you can see here um not overly tight but tight enough just like any of the other belts there just make sure there's not a ton of slack in it once it's pulled tight and your belt is tight tighten down the two back bolts that hold it in here and you should be good now keep in mind i did take off the filament holder um it usually sits right here i'm going to put that back on um either over here over here if this is in the way you can actually slide it one way or another to get it out of the way of that filament holder if you want to use it next what we want to do is make sure that these are not binding and you can do that by moving this up and seeing how difficult it is now it's going to be a little bit harder or a little bit different because now you're you're pulling the uh the second z rod here but if you're if it's really too difficult and you're binding what we need to do is take your allen wrench go ahead loosen up the two screws in there and that'll adjust this here so i would suggest going all the way up and then all the way back down with this one at least loose i loosened them both and i went all the way up and then all the way back down and now i'm spinning very freely and very easily when i got that nice free motion i held the block in place and i tightened them in and that's how you stop the z wobble which was the next step now once you made sure your z wobble is gone with both of the screws you want to flip the printer back around and we need to check the level on the x gantry you can do this multiple ways you can print level blocks and there are some uh files in tim's instructions to do that if you want to we do the x gantry rework if you follow the steps in that i'll link it below everything should be dang near awesome for you now what i believe is what lou catfield teaches and what we need to do is just measure both sides and we're going to we need to actually level your x gantry to your frame not to your bed but to your frame and to do that we want to make sure both sides are within one millimeter of each other and just for the heck of it i would when i put this back together just doing this enough times if you watched any of my videos i was watching this so i'm going to go up to 80 millimeters on this side i'm going to click over here and i have right under 81 millimeters so i am i am dead close to being almost dead on so i have 80 millimeters here and if i come over here i have about 80 and a half it's it's so close to 80 right between 80 and 81 which is perfect because we only need a one we only want a one millimeter difference on both sides so you can follow hit tim's instructions with the leveling blocks if you want or you can use the x gantry rework is make sure your x gantry is perfectly level to the frame not to your bed but to the frame and when you're done if you have a ruler you want it within one millimeter on each side that's how you know you're good all right so that's it we have successfully installed the th3d dual z upgrade kit on my ender three once you get the z rods not binding spend some time and do that make sure they're not binding at all and that everything is nice and moves nice number two make sure that your x gantry is level print the leveling blocks before if you want um follow my x gantry rework from luke hatfield in the videos before either way just make sure it's level like i've talked about before next thing we need to talk about is the eccentric nut and this carriage on this side here um you need to make sure that that's rolling very nicely before you put it together i was following the steps and i'm going to make the recommendation to tim to throw it in the steps right before you attach it to the frame here i think we should put the wheels on and then check you know that it rolls nice and then attach it to your x gantry but what i did was i just adjusted the x gantry and tested the wheels so when you adjust them you should adjust it so all the wheels are tight um but not too tight and enough to turn it with your fingers still if they're too tight you can't turn it with your fingers that's way too tight you need to back them off a little bit if they're way too loose and they just spin that's too loose so just make sure the eccentric nut is good on this carriage and it's rolling nicely that's going to help everything travel much better now what we're going to do is turn it on and we're going to do an auto home just to see if everything's working okay and make sure it goes up and down by itself so we'll go to prepare auto home and we'll let it do its thing everything is going like it should the belt is turning and it's turning uh both sides of the gantry which is awesome and we've honed so that's pretty cool so everything is working as it should we've successfully installed the dual z upgrade kit like we talked about and i think we're good to go especially if you have the direct drive printer mods upgrade this is probably a really good thing to do just to give yourself a little bit of assurance on that uh the left side or if you're looking at the printer on the right side of that gantry so it's not going up and down by itself well i hope you learned something today and as always keep printing hey everybody let me know in the comments below what you think of this upgrade you like the video give me a thumbs up click that subscribe button below if you want to see more and then the bell right over here if you want to see the next great video that comes out we look forward to seeing you soon later