Ender 3XL Vertical Extension

Parts and Build Instructions

Maker Mark’s Guide to Extending the Ender 3/Ender 3 Pro
Facebook group: Ender 3XL Parts Group Buy

WORK IN PROGRESS 7/17/2019 NOT FINISHED YET

Welcome 3D Printer Enthusiast and Hacker! This guide will enable your Ender 3 or Ender 3 Pro
3D Printer to “reach” its full potential! From the first unboxing and setup, to the first print, and
through the end of our first spool of filament we all wondered, what if it were taller? What could
I print? What would I print? Here are some examples.

Thingiverse Vase at 19” (480mm)

Key Marco Cat (Smithsonian) 18”
The Orville

Others? What would you print?

Now that we’re done dreaming, let’s get to the nuts and bolts. First some disclaimers and
caveats.

Printing tall things takes enormous amount of time. Yes, even a single walled vase in spiral
mode (basically one continuous print) takes an all nighter. The vase shown above took about 9
hours overnight. If you’re used to lengthy prints then this shouldn’t scare you. However if you
have only printed small test cubes and widgets, bear these facts in mind.

If your print fails, do not despair, usually it is salvageable. However, if you wake up or come
home to a plate full of spaghetti, sorry, no, we can’t salvage that.

DISCLAIMER
If you choose to buy the parts yourself through the online resources mentioned below, you will
be dealing with some potentially hazardous tools and construction methods. Namely cutting the
long piece of V-Slot extrusion and then tapping the threads into the ends. I’ll describe a simple
shortcut for the tapping part, but the cutting involves, well, cutting. You could use a hack saw,
but that is going to be very challenging to keep the cut straight. You should use some kind of
piece of wood as a guide. I can’t vouch for this method as I have not tried it, but I’ll put a picture
in to demonstrate what I think would be a workable method.
NO WARRANTY
You are buying a box of parts and my basic backyard hacker skills. I’m not a professional, I’m
just handy with tools (sometimes) and hopefully can make a decent guide.

PARTS LIST

Lead screw - that long shiny thing at the left side of your printer (back) that moves the horizontal
bar up and down. Yeah, we’re going to need a longer one. You can find them on Amazon,
Ebay, Aliexpress. You have two choices. Had I been paying attention when I built my first
Ender 3XL, I would have bought the 650MM lead screw and I would not have had to relocate
my Z Motor. Search for 650mm t8 lead screw on Amazon, Ebay, etc. You want the 2mm pitch,
4 start style.

Since I goofed and bought the 550mm, I had no choice but to move the Z motor to the top of the
frame. It turns out there is a fair amount of wasted length at the bottom of the printer, and the
top actually. So this turned out to not be a problem, and to be honest, I prefer the Z Motor to be
at the top. The reason is, when the print reaches the high end of the printer, with the Z Motor in
this configuration, it reduces the lead screw wobble significantly. And when the carriage is at
the bottom of the printer, there is also no wobble. If you follow this guide to the letter, you will
end up with the Z Motor at the top, and everything will be fine and dandy. I may give it a try with
the Z motor at the bottom, just so I can speak from a point of knowledge on the topic.

Something worth noting, I recommend a solid base for the printer. I’m using a 2 foot by 2 foot
piece of MDF. This was a useful choice, as I decided to mount the filament spool to the base
board. Note: I do not recommend mounting the filament spool on top of the printer unless you
have a direct drive extruder and you have anchored the printer to the wall as I have shown in
the pictures that follow (I used one of the original rails for the support).
New and Improved height of the printable area:

Here are the details:

My setup:

550mm T8 Lead Screw and Brass Nut (Acme Thread, 2mm Pitch, 4 Starts, 8mm Lead)
Boshen, Amazon $12.29 + free shipping (shameless affiliate link)

https://amzn.to/2XO0OyC

Vertical extrusion rails - This is called OpenBuilds V-Slot 20x40 Linear Rail
Only buy this from OpenBuilds, you cannot be certain that something that is generic and
labelled “V-Slot” will actually work. OpenBuilds is a reputable distributor (I think they invented it,
thus its their trademark)
V-Slot® 20x40 Linear Rail (OpenBuilds)
$22.99 each
$11.20 shipping for one piece
Available on ebay or their website but not on Amazon.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/V-Slot-20x40-Linear-Rail/263747808061?hash=item3d68982b3d:m:m
QXKAzpoj1xvzUpwYdqjeHg:sc:USPSPriority!75028!US!-1

https://openbuildspartstore.com/v-slot-20x40-linear-rail/

I chose the 1500mm, Industrial Black so that it matches the Ender 3 exactly.

You will need a Z Motor extension wire (the one that drives the lead screw) . The best I could
find is 1 meter long, which will give you a bunch of extra so you will need to loop that and use a
wire tie to constrain it. Tuck it under the printer to keep it out of the way.

1M stepper wire
Maker Mark’s Store (hey, that’s me!)
$3.50

Buy the parts separately and you'll pay about $50-$60 US including tax and shipping

My Value Added Services

Because I’m a nice guy, and I love the 3D printing hobby and community, I’ll do some of the
hard work for you:

Receive group shipment

Cut 1500mm beam into two 750mm sections
Drill + Tap mounting holes
Repack (buy boxes, shipping materials)
Ship to group members

See current prices online

Now on to the construction instructions

You can skip this if you are buying the kit. Move on to installation instructions.

We’re going to start with cutting the aluminum extrusions. For this process I’m going to use my
rusty chop saw. This saw has a special blade, 72 tooth, usable for cutting aluminum stock. You
must not use a blade with very few teeth, this can be very dangerous. If you don’t have this
tool, you can use a hack-saw. You could also use an angle grinder with a cut off wheel.

Notice that I have blue painter’s tape. I measured the length of the rail and divided by 2, and
marked a line on the tape. ​After you cut the rail, do not remove the tape, we need to
remember which end we cut.
The ends of the beam have two holes, which will need threads:

There are two ways to accomplish this. The professional way, and my way.

First a video on the Professional Way(?), using a drill tap:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvcV3j6voCc

Drill tap on OpenBuilds store:

https://openbuildspartstore.com/drill-taps/

Threading the end holes

You will be disassembling your printer at some point, but a preview here. At the bottom of the
printer on each side you will see two screws. These are pretty long screws. You can actually
use these screws to thread the aluminum, it works a lot better than hand powered tap tool! A
drill powered tap tool shown in the above video would be the easiest, but it’s another expense.
I’ll demonstrate how to do the backyard hacker method later. But for future reference you will
need to tap both ends of the rails, thus 8 holes total.
Hand tapping threads

This is what a hand tap looks like. If you have a high quality one and know how to use it, by all
means have a go. But if you don’t, then don’t feel compelled to buy one, and certainly don’t buy
a cheap, poorly made one.
We will be drilling two holes in each rail, two for the power supply on the right rail, and two for
the Z motor mount on the left rail.

Now that we got the introductory stuff out of the way, let’s disassemble our Ender 3 and make it
ready for the transplant!

Disassembly Steps

Coming soon!
Assembly Steps

Remember that I told you not to remove the blue tape when we cut the rail? The reason I gave
this very important demand is because when manufacturers cut these extrusions, they use
pretty expensive accurate cutting tools, unlike our rusty dusty chop saw. The ends opposite of
the blue tape will be mounted to the printer, and the blue tape ends will point up, to the
non-important top rail.This ensures that the rails will be as straight and square to the bottom
rails as possible and not subject to our drunken cutting skills.

Place one rail up to the bottom frame rail, align the holes in the bottom frame to the one of the
holes in the end of the rail. With an allen wrench, screw in one of the long screws you removed
earlier. This will be a tight fit, so don’t worry, it will go in, just make sure you keep the screw as
straight as possible. Keep twisting until it’s ​almost​ all the way in. Now repeat with the other
screw. Don’t tighten them all the way yet, just a little bit snug. This will help with an alignment
step later. Repeat this step for the other side. Consult the pictures while I grab another beer.