This walkthrough not only was crucial for upgrading my Ender 3V2 but also taught me a lot more about my printer AND highlighted another issue with it (a missing screw). Thanks a ton!
@@fahadxxdblyes, the more and more I’ve been printing with my ender 3 v2 over the years the more I realize they gave you the bare minimum for the printer. I had to upgrade my extruder and buy a cr touch and my printer still has horrible consistency and will sometimes not print whatsoever.
@@punk8570 thankssssss, are you sure about the consistency? I’ve had 2 for 3 years and noticed that as soon as you have cr touch and *really* good maintenance schedule, I almost never have any issues at all with +98% success prints But thanks I’m definitely gonna go for the dual axis now :D (I printed a custom cooling cage for the hot end and it’s definitely worth it but by an extra 4020 fan first)
@@fahadxxdbl it definitely could be my printer specifically but I’ll print something and it’ll be perfect then I’ll try to print a couple more things and I’ll get objects that will have terrible bed adhesion. But ya having a dual z axis rod like this is honestly one of the better upgrades you could get.
@@punk8570 ohhhh, then the issue is from both the bed and the hot end, I had this issue with my second printer before getting a cr touch (cr touch won’t fix it but help maintain the fix), use glue and before the levelling strengthen the bed springs + check for issues in your hot end cuz it’s the most likely root cause that extend these issues It took me 3 months to figure this out, not sure how common this issue is though since all online fixes were basic
Never comment on videos but man the lack of Creality instructions stressed me in my kit and your video made it pretty much seamless. My kit was slightly different but nevertheless got it all working. Thanks for the great video, much appreciated.
Excellent walkthrough! I just followed you and installed my extra Z axis without issue. One thing to note, not all of these Creality kits are made equal. For example, my new cable had no female end like yours. I had to remove the original cable entirely and attach my new (longer than yours) cable to the motherboard and then to each of the steppers independently.
Thanks for sharing, that's what I've been hearing.. a lot of variability in the wire harnessing and connectors. Hope you got yours installed without having to order new parts!
I found the same thing. This video explains how to fix the issue. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hXOCofkMAwc.html He is not as easy to understand as this video, and I had to cut the wire tie to get the old cable out, but other than that, seemed to work well, I'm doing a test block right now. All the other steps I took right from here. Very helpful! Thanks!
Better bed springs and a metal extruder imo are absolute musts even before you print for the first time. I say that because with me the stock plastic extruder was cracked and I had no idea. Every single print I attempted ended in utter failure pretty early on. I adjusted and re tightened and readjusted my adjusments so many times that I was ready to just give up on 3d printing and throw my printer out my 2nd story window. I was so frustrated beyond belief. Still not knowing my extruder was cracked, I bought springs and the metal extruder because that's what majority or almost everybody recommends as first upgrade. Well sure as sh!t I discovered the cracked extruder upon installing the metal one. Put the new springs on and every single print from then on has been pretty much flawless. I know I can't be the only one and it's sad because I know people have completely given up on 3d printing cause they didn't realize a small issue like that and didn't put two and two together. Anyways just thought id share lol
@@Impuritan1 Upgrade hasnt improved nor deteriated the print quality. It did help with the ABL probe, as I use klipper and do two probes per spot. After upgraded to a direct drive system. ABL would error out on the left side of the bed due to the readings not being the same. After the Z axis upgrade it eliminated shagging on the X gantry when going to the left side of the bed and ABL probing has been spot on with little deviation between the probing. Upgraede was under £20 as well from aliexpress so not a huge cost.
I'm thinking about doing this upgrade to my E3V2. I just purchased the E3V3 and find that the printer solves almost all of the problems I had with the V2. The biggest is the dual z-axis rods. Now if I could find some way to do the auto z-height adjustment on my V2, I'd be all set!!
My kit was different, but pretty close in general, and you provided actual instructions, unlike Creality. I won't know until my new X stop switch comes in how well it worked, but it's at least all put together, thanks entirely to your video. Subbed for that alone 👍
I picked up a very well used Ender 3 the other day, and thought this might be a good upgrade to do as I repair the worn out parts. Thank you for the video.
Thanks for making this video, I got this upgrade kit for Christmas, found your video since the print on the instructions were to small for me to see. this helped out alot.
Just hot my dual kit in today. Going to install over the weekend. I was hoping for a good tutorial, and I found it. New to 3d printing, considering a resin printer too.
You really shouldn't tighten everything right away. Those issues at the top of the post upgrade print are probably because you didn't take time to adjust with everything a bit loose to account for machining errors and warping, leading to binding or similar. Otherwise this is an excellent video, but to anyone who follows along - make sure you adjust both lead screws correctly before tightening everything.
How do you know if the z rods in sync with each other. This could mean they make the x axis not level what do we recommend for this. I only ask this because everythings been loosened off
Yea if you have warped Z axis rods, you'll want to skip the top brackets. Without the top brackets, the top of the rod is able to swivel freely if it's warped. But if you put the brackets on the top, it fixes the top of the rod and causes the middle of the rod to swivel where your gantry is and can cause binding. I got lucky with some fairly straight rods on my kit.
I had issues with binding right off the bat but I loosened the bottom bolts on the couplers and it corrected the issue. I just had them too tight apparently.
@@uskeeze2131 err, you should test for binding with them loose, to let them settle in a natural position. Then you should tighten them up pretty well. That will help or eliminate binding, and avoid z skipping. If you loosened them up so much that it fixed itself, it's probably too loose still.
Yea, upgrades can be a bit painful as you’re always needing to retune and adjust things. Sometimes it’s nice to have a printer that just prints and is tuned well. I am definitely going against the “if it ain’t broke don’t try and fix it” theory here 😆
Oh man i absolute love that cooling fan setup on your hot end is that something you made or can you share the link to please? I would love to add that to my e3v2
I decided to go for belt z instead of dual z, but turns out I have to buy a new top rail extrusion and cut and drill it to size, due to the Ender 3 V2 NEO having stupidly changed the extrusions and removed one of the V-slots.
before you bought this kit, did you tune your eccentric nuts on the right and left to try and get that skinny tower better? Man that tower looked like a good reason to upgrade.
I reversed the pin head bolts to face the front my ender came with the nuts facing forward however on the website the round heads are all facing forward so if it matters to you i think it would look much better with the nuts facing the rear however great video!
I did this upgrade in my ttb, my kit have belt to sincronize the 2 screws. I had o buy a divisor to connect both motors in board and need to invert z axis in firmware too.
doing the same upgrade, however, I am changing to an octopus bord(overkill) for g34 so I can level the x-axis , also i am installing backlash nuts and flexible couplers
at 9:23 why it gets worse on the high point and its okay on lower point? can we fix it or its just the maximum the printer can produce? Just curious. why it gets wobbly on higher points.
We can improve it, but it's just the physics of a tall skinny rod, pretty much a slight breeze or movement in the printer bed can make it wobble slightly.
Great tutorial! I may do the same upgrade on my V2. I see the video is 5 months old. Do you still feel like you get better print quality? Any issues or unexpected things after 5 months? Thanks
No issues here, just make sure your gantry is set the same height on both sides and don’t manually move your Z axis in the future or you can possible get the motors out of sync and have to re level
One time I move the motors manually and struggled for a few prints as the nozzle kept wanting to dig into the print. Turns out the right side of the gantry was lower. Other than that one time no other issues 😃
Hey dude, Bro, weighing down that hot end with a bunch of stuff is not going to help matters either LMAO You got that poor machine all wrapped up LOL. Well I guess you are doing you. It does look cool I just have reservations on your color choices. Thx for posting it was helpful
That's a good question, I have heard of other people doing this with success. I'm not sure if it's better or not than 2 servo motors. Seems like it would have more mechanical backlash/lag, but on the other hand, you don't have to worry about 2 motors fighting each other.
great video but the dual z-axis upgrade has been a nightmare for me. I got the one from creality and it has been massive problem after massive problem. I spent hours on it and after finishing it I noticed an odd 'quiet' noise from what I assume is the motor. Then my prints would produce weird rings at certain heights and worst of all I noticed the frame along the x-axis (so the bar connect the two vertical bars) was not perfectly straight... never doing this mod again lol
Sorry to hear about your poor experience with this upgrade. I’m starting to plan a follow up video to try and address some of the finer challenges/issues with this upgrade.
Mine was stock at 1.20V and I later adjusted it to 1.37V for some troubleshooting on a different issue. I didn't notice any difference. My understanding is since the current is split between the 2 stepper motors you don't have to increase the voltage from the stock setting.
What’s the newest version of the Printhead you are using? And also so have the exact setup as you with 3 noctuas on the printhead. One set up with a buck converter and the two part cooling ones in series right? Or is it parallel im not quite sure. I don’t quite know if they are blowing as much air as they could be:/
I’m using the print head from www.thingiverse.com/thing:5397797. Yea the 2 part cooling fans are in series. At one point I had them in parallel with a buck converter hooked up before them so I could turn them up to 14-15V but didn’t really seem necessary so I took out that buck converter.
Hi, I just assembled my V2, and I observed that reaching the full 250mm height should be impossible without the Bowden tube + cable crushing into the top rail. Did you have this issue? If so does your direct drive setup improve upon this?
Hi sorry for the late reply I forgot to test this. For the supercharged V8 printing setup I have I can go about to 235mm height and after that the cables will start to rub on the top frame. With some different cable management I could definitely go to 250mm, nothing hard is physically interfering.
the wooden table is not something i woould use to accurately check flatness on an object. in order to accurately check flatness, the surface your measuring it against needs to be exactly flat as well =]
What brand or who made the duel z axis kit you used? I just got one from Creality and installed right up to the hooking up the 2nd motor. This kits wiring is different that the one you show. It's a Y cable but all 3 ends are the same plug.
I guess you might found out already but, the Creality Dual Z kit replaces the original one stepper cable with a new one. So you have to remove the original from the board and use the supplied one.
@@PC1I yeah it wasn't the simple "T" inline connectors. I had to open up and replace the whole harness. It's just to bad the new harness is long enough to wrap once around my house and still plug into the machine. Luckily I have the resources to cut the harness and put new plug ends on it.
First of all, thanks for the video. Ender 3v2 4.2.2 Motherboard. I am using dual Z axis motor. What should be the vref setting of the Z axis driver? I am using BMG extruder with Direct Drive. What should be the vref setting of the extruder driver? Öncelikle video için teşekkürler. Ender 3v2 4.2.2 Anakart. Çift Z eksen motoru kullanıyorum. Z eksen sürücüsünün vref ayarı kaç olmalı? Direct Drive ile BMG ekstruder kullanıyorum. Ekstruder sürücüsünün vref ayarı kaç olmalı?
I think you certainly could. The aluminum coupler flexes so much though it puts constant tension on the screws. I actually had a tough time backing the screw out without threadlocker.
I thought the dual z upgrade would involve some firmware changes and an additional stepper driver to drive the other motor. what if they get misaligned? how do you make sure they are both level?
Exactly the same way you would before this upgrade, by printing some gantry leveling blocks and using them to fix alignment from time to time. Usually only necessary if you man handle the gantry, or leave the machine unpowered for long periods. The nice thing about this upgrade is that when you have some time and money, you can get a dual z board and install a version of Marlin with G34 auto leveling. Completely eliminating gantry misalignment. This of course requires a touch sensor, but I assume you'd have that long before doing this upgrade. As to how this works, both motors use the same drivers, and run at half power just fine. This is not a great choice for direct drive extruders as the two motors may not have enough power for that - perfectly fine for the bowden setup however, since two half power motors is still equal to one full power motor.
I was told you have to flash the mb in the printer for this to work!? Is this true? Just got my first printer for Christmas, was thinking about adding this on during build.
@@DesktopInventions Thank you very much for the reply. If I may ask one more question. Is it worth adding on? I have yet to put together, just assumed it would make projects more “stable”.
I think so, I’ve had some issues in prints with the right side of the gantry sagging before. I just recommend spending time to make sure all of your frame is square when installing. Don’t 100% trust even the bolts installed by creality
Touch is going to be able to account for gantry tilt somewhat, and makes life way easier in general. It's also not a very complex upgrade. Start with that, and print some blocks to use for aligning the gantry (which shouldn't be very common). You can do this in the future, if you want to, but I would go for a belt solution if you're not planning to get a better main board at some point. It's more moving parts, but you don't need to worry about z skipping or the machine being powered off causing misalignment. Dual Z stepper motors makes way more sense with a Dual Z board + G34 auto leveling. Otherwise you're still going to do manual leveling, just far less regularly.
I use the Jyers firmware to setup a 5x5 or more grid for probing the bed. This works pretty well for me. Here’s a short on installing Jyers ru-vid.comGjY0mlFpynE?feature=share
I had a similar issue to this. The frame will actually force one side to sag if everything is not square. I remember I did a lot of measurements and found that the steel plate attaching the horizontal gantry extrusion piece and the wheels riding on the left vertical were not square. I had to loosen the screws attaching the plate to the horizontal extrusion, square everything up, then retighten. You might find the same issue or you might find another connection is not square. Hope this helps!
can anyone please tell me.. will this kit work for the Anycubic Kobra? is it bad practive to split the power like that going to 2 motors? can it cause prolems down the road?
Since I upgraded my printer with a second z-axis, the movement of the z-axis is in the opposite direction. Can someone help me to fix this issue? Thanks!
You can swap 2 wires around on the connector that plugs into your main board. There are quite a few videos on it just search “inverting stepper motor Ender 3”
No you shouldn’t have to. Each motor should be pulling roughly half the load with the same voltage since they’re in parallel. I haven’t had any problems running without adjustment.
Oh they didn’t give 1 female and 2 male ends? Sent all the same style? That’s a shame I’m sorry to hear about that! Did you get a nut driver with the kit?
I have been contemplating a dual Z upgrade on my E3 Pro for a while, and my main concern with this option is missed steps (although rare) will actually create squareness issues.
Yes I’ve noticed improvements since installed this. Previously I would occasionally have the nozzle dragon on layers due to the right side sagging. I’ve not had this issue now
Check to make sure everything is square. I had to loosen some bolts on the marek brackets that attached the roller wheels to my horizontal extrusion piece. Square it, then tighten again. Also the 2 motors are linked electrically even with the power off. So if you have to adjust 1 up or down manually, unplug it, adjust it, then plug it in again. Hope this helps!
