Airwolf HD2x Z Adjust/Rod Endcap Replacement

thingiverse

I inherited(read "Found sitting unused in a corner of the storage room") an Airwolf 3D HD2x printer from work, and set about cleaning it up and making it useful. After replacing the hotend and updating the firmware, I started levelling the bed and noticed that I couldn't get it consistently level. The Z height adjust knob is a clever little thing mounted on one of the Z guide rod endcaps, and is basically just an M3 bolt with a knob on the end of it that activates the Z endstop. But there's something of a design flaw with how Airwolf implemented it. They put the retaining nut on the wrong side of the endcap! Gravity wants to pull the bolt/nut down out of the endcap, resulting in inconsistent Z homing. They originally had a spring on the bolt, to try to counteract this effect, but by the time I inherited the printer, this spring is long dead. So I took some measurements, and redesigned it so that the retaining nut is held between the endcap and the upper acrylic plate, eliminating the effect of gravity, the spring, and allowing you to use a regular M3 nut instead of an M3 nylock. So grab an M3 nut, and your M3 wrench, and enjoy! ==Updates== 2018/04/26 ~noon: Original version 2018/04/26 1PM: Adjusted nut cutout sizes, because I was looking at the minimum sizes, not the maximum...